“Nobody that hasn't already run away to be married once or twice could tell how it was going to feel! Never did I pass so unhappy a day! If Mark was not everything that is kind and gentle, he would have tipped me out of the sleigh into a snowbank and left me by the roadside to freeze. I might have been murdered instead of only married, by the way I behaved; but Mark and Ellen understood. Then, the very next day, Mark's father sent him up to Bridgton on business, and he had to go to Allentown first to return a friend's horse, so he couldn't break the news to father at once, as he intended.” “Does a New Hampshire marriage hold good in Maine?” asked Waitstill, still intent on the bare facts at the bottom of the romance. “Well, of course,” stammered Patty, some-what confused, “Maine has her own way of doing things, and wouldn't be likely to fancy New Hampshire's. But nothing can make it wicked or anything but according to law. Besides, Mark considered all the difficulties. He is wonderfully clever, and he has a clerkship in a Portsmouth law office waiting for him; and that's where we are going to live, in New Hampshire, where we were married, and my darling sister will come soon and stay months and months with us.” “When is Mark coming back to arrange all this?” “Late to-night or early to-morrow morning. Where did you go after you were married?” “Where did I go?” echoed Patty, in a childish burst of tears. “Where could I go? It took all day to be married--all day long, working and driving hard from sunrise to seven o'clock in the evening. Then when we reached the bridge, Mark dropped me, and I walked up home in the dark, and went to bed without any supper, for fear that you and father would come back and catch me at it and ask why I was so late.” “My poor, foolish dear!” sighed Waitstill. Patty's tears flowed faster at the first sound of sympathy in Waitstill's voice, for self-pity is very enfeebling. She fairly sobbed as she continued:-- “So my only wedding-journey was the freezing drive back from Allentown, with Ellen crying all the way and wishing that she hadn't gone with us. Mark and I both say we'll never be married again so long as we live!” “Where have you seen your husband from that day to this?”