The service seemed almost too brief for so solemn an undertaking, but when it was over, she reached for Don's hand and took it in a hearty grip that was more of a pledge than the ring itself. It sent a tingle to his heart and made his lips come together--the effect, a hundred times magnified, of the coach's slap upon the back that used to thrill him just before he trotted on the field before a big game. He felt that the harder the obstacles to be overcome for her dear sake, the better. He would like to have had a few at that moment as a relief to his pent-up emotions. He remembered in a sort of impatient daze the congratulations that followed--with the faces of Mrs. Halliday and Barton standing out a trifle more prominently--and then the luncheon. It seemed another week before she went upstairs to change into her traveling-dress; another week before she reappeared. Then came good-byes and the shower of rice, with an old shoe or so mixed in. He had sent her trunk the day before to the mountain hotel where they were to be for a week, but they walked to the station, he carrying her suitcase. Then he found himself on the train, and in another two hours they were at the hotel. It was like an impossible dream come true when finally they stood for the first time alone--she as his wife. He held out his arms to her and she came this time without protest. "Heart of mine," he whispered as he kissed her lips again and again,--"heart of mine, this is a bully old world." "You've made it that, Don." "I? I haven't had anything to do about it except to get you." CHAPTER XXXIV DON MAKES GOOD They had not one honeymoon, but two or three. When they left the hotel and came back to town, it was another honeymoon to enter together the house in which she had played so important a part without ever having seen it. When they stepped out of the cab she insisted upon first seeing it from the outside, instead of rushing up the steps as he was for doing. "Don," she protested, "I--I don't want to have such a pleasure over with all at once. I want to get it bit by bit." There was not much to see, to be sure, but a door and a few windows--a section similar to sections to the right and left of which it was a part. But it was a whole house, a house with lower stories and upper stories and a roof--all his, all hers. To her there was something still unreal about it. He humored her delay, though Nora was standing impatiently at the door, anxious to see the Pendleton bride. But when she finally did enter, Nora, at the smile she received, had whatever fears might have been hers instantly allayed. "Gawd bless ye," she beamed. Sally refused to remove her wraps until she had made her inspection room by room, sitting down in each until she had grasped every detail. So they went from the first floor to the top floor and came back to the room which he had set apart for their room. "Does it suit you, wife of mine?" he asked. With the joy of it all, her eyes filled.