So it had come to pass that these two, who, as Mrs. Paul said, “were made for each other,” were going to be married. * * * * * “Just think, in two weeks!” he said, as they sat there under the oak, the blossoming grass knee-deep about them, and the air sweet with clover. “Amy, it does not seem as if I had been alive until now.” “I wonder, does it go on getting--nicer?” she asked him, a little shyly; “everything seems to be better, and more worth while.” “I understand,” he said. And they were silent for awhile, because understanding is enough, when people are in love. Then the girl’s gayety began to sparkle out. “Billy, Cousin Kate says if I’m not careful I’ll get to be a managing Parsoness; she says I must devote myself to you, not to your poor people.” “Mrs. Paul has given a great deal of good advice in her day,” the Rev. Billy remarked meditatively, “and I really think very little harm has come from it.” “She advised your being called to Mercer,” Amy retorted. “Did you know that?” “Know it? My dear child! how often have I dined at the Pauls’? Just so often have I heard it.” “Now, Billy, that’s not very nice in you.” “I but stated a fact; and I have a high regard for Mrs. Paul. Only, when I think how many girls she has tried to make marry me!--but they would none of them look at me.” “And in two weeks the opportunity will be gone,” she jeered. “Poor girls!” the minister commiserated; and was reproved for vanity. Indeed, just because happiness is so serious a thing, they became very frivolous, these two, sitting watching the sunset, and the river. Amy told him a funny story about the parish; he responded by another concerning Tom Reilly, a policeman; which reminded Amy to tell him that poor Tom had had an accident, and hurt his hand. “But it was very stupid in him,” she added, with a little of that resentful goodness that one sees sometimes in women. “I’m not at all sorry for him, because he deserved it. He had been drinking, and as he went stumbling out of a car, he crushed his hand in the door.” Her lover was not to be lured into professional comments; he only muttered, “_Mauvais quart d’heure_”--which made her say indignantly: “Now, Billy, really, that is _too_ much!” and insist that they should go home immediately. “I cannot descend to such levels,” she told him; and was very stern and forbidding when, looking to the right and left, and seeing no man, he begged to be allowed to kiss her. But this was all froth. Beneath, in the man’s life, were the great tides of love, moving, noiseless and unchangeable, from out the depths of his soul. In the girl’s life it was all shine and perfume and glitter, like flowers blossoming on a rock; beneath, in her heart, was the solid ground of reverence and faith. II The two weeks that were to pass before the day that was to be the Day of Days were very full.