Well; they had gone to the mayor's office, and been married; then they had got on a car and ridden through Mercer's dingy outskirts to the end of the route in Medfield, where, beyond suburban uglinesses, there were glimpses of green fields. Once as the car rushed along, screeching around curves and banging over switches, Eleanor said, "I've come out here four times a week for four years, to Fern Hill." And Maurice said: "Well, _that's_ over! No more school-teaching for you!" She smiled, then sighed. "I'll miss my little people," she said. But except for that they were silent. When they left the car, he led the way across a meadow to the bank of the river; there they sat down under the locust, and he kissed her, quietly; then, for a while, still dumb with the wonder of themselves, they watched the sky, and the sailing white clouds, and the river--flowing--flowing; and each other. "Fifty-four minutes," he had said.... So they sat there and planned for the endless future--the "fifty-four years." "When we have our golden wedding," he said, "we shall come back here, and sit under this tree--" He paused; he would be--let's see: nineteen, plus fifty, makes sixty-nine. He did not go farther with his mental arithmetic, and say thirty-nine plus fifty; he was thinking only of himself, not of her. In fifty years he would be, he told himself, an old man. And what would happen in all these fifty golden years? "You know, long before that time, perhaps it won't be--just us?" he said. The color leaped to her face; she nodded, finding no words in which to expand that joyous "perhaps," which touched the quick in her. Instantly that sum in addition which he had not essayed in his own mind, became unimportant in hers. What difference did the twenty severing years make, after all? Her heart rose with a bound--she had a quick vision of a little head against her bosom! But she could not put it into words. She only challenged, him: "I am not clever like you. Do you think you can love a stupid person for fifty years?" "For a thousand years!--but you're not stupid." She looked doubtful; then went on confessing: "Auntie says I'm a dummy, because I don't talk very much. And I'm awfully timid. And she says I'm jealous."