XXXVII THE OLD CLOCK TICKS AGAIN "It's a rambling old place," Westover said, as he and Margaret strolled through the vast spaces of the Wanalah rooms with their highly polished white ash floors, their wealth of stoutly built, time darkened furniture, their ancient, oaken wainscots and their hospitably spacious fireplaces. "I suppose a modern judgment would say tear it down and build anew--" "Then the modern judgment shall have no welcome when I am mistress here. Tear down Wanalah, with its walls of thick masonry, its generously large rooms, and its memories? Only a vandal would do that. I'll tell you, Boyd, there is only one change I'd like you to make here." "I'll make it. What is it?" "There's a beautiful old standing clock in the dining room that has never ticked since I have known Wanalah. Won't you have somebody put new works into it and set it going again?" "Yes," he answered, "but it shall not run until you and I return from our wedding trip and you enter the house as its mistress. We'll go to it together then and set it going, to mark time in a new era at Wanalah." "You are very good and thoughtful and tender, Boyd. I suppose you are a trifle romantic also, but I shall certainly not quarrel with that, now or ever." "Speaking of our wedding trip, Margaret," he said eagerly, "what is it to be? We can go anywhere you like and everywhere you like and for as long as you like." "Am I really free to choose?" she asked, looking into his eyes. "Yes, really and absolutely." "What I would like best, then, would be to go up to that place of yours in the high mountains. It was there that you suffered most on my account; I want you to rejoice and be happy there, Boyd, by way of recompense." "But it's rough living up there, Margaret; perhaps you'd find it----" "I'd find it delightful. How could it be otherwise, with just you and me there?" "It shall be so then. Nothing could delight me more. I'll get Theonidas to carry my things back up there at once. They are still at Judy's. And we'll take along with us whatever baggage you want." "That will be very little. It is the air, the sunshine, the rain, the freedom and _you_, Boyd, that I want. And besides, you know you have forbidden me to have a trousseau. I'll be a wood nymph or a water witch or something of that sort, and such beings do not bother with baggage, I suppose." During the next week, Westover was speaking day and night, all over the district. He really cared nothing for the office he was running for, but it was his temperament to do his mightiest to win in any contest in which he had a part, and in this case he had the additional impulse to gratify Margaret by securing the biggest majority possible for his election.