that!" said
Mark gallantly. "Then it's decided that next morning I'll wait at the
tavern from sunrise, and whenever your father and Waitstill have driven
up Saco Hill, I'll come and pick you up and we 'll be off like a streak
of lightning across the hills to New Hampshire. How lucky that Riverboro
is only thirty miles from the state line!--It looks like snow, and how
I wish it would be something more than a flurry; a regular whizzing,
whirring storm that would pack the roads and let us slip over them with
our sleigh-bells ringing!"

"I should like that, for they would be our only wedding-bells. Oh! Mark!
What if Waitstill shouldn't go, after all: though I heard father tell
her that he needed her to buy things for the store, and that they
wouldn't be back till after nightfall. Just to think of being married
without Waitstill!"

"You can do without Waitstill on this one occasion, better than you can
without me," laughed Mark, pinching Patty's cheek. "I've given the town
clerk due notice and I have a friend to meet me at his office. He is
going to lend me his horse for the drive home, and we shall change back
the next week. That will give us a fresh horse each way, and we'll fly
like the wind, snow or no snow, When we come down Guide Board Hill that
night, Patty, we shall be man and wife; isn't that wonderful?"

"We shall be man and wife in New Hampshire, but not in Maine, you say,"
Patty reminded him dolefully. "It does seem dreadful that we can't be
married in our own state, and have to go dangling about with this secret
on our minds, day and night; but it can't be helped! You'll try not to
even think of me as your wife till we go to Portsmouth to live, won't
you?"

"You're asking too much when you say I'm not to think of you as my
wife, for I shall think of nothing else, but I've given you my solemn
promise," said Mark stoutly, "and I'll keep it as sure as I live. We'll
be legally married by the laws of New Hampshire, but we won't think of
it as a marriage till I tell your father and mine, and we drive away
once more together. That time it will be in the sight of everybody, with
our heads in the air. I've got the little house in Portsmouth all ready,
Patty: it's small, but it's in a nice part of the town. Portsmouth is a
pretty place, but it'll be a great deal prettier when it has Mrs. Mark
Wilson living in it. We can be married over again in Maine, afterwards,
if your heart is set upon it. I'm willing to marry you