o it which would naturally be used as a dining room. In the rear
of this was the kitchen and besides the door there was a slide through
which to pass the food. Upstairs there were four big rooms stretching
the whole width of the house. Above these there was a servant's room.
The whole house was prettily finished and in the two rooms down stairs
there were fireplaces which took my eye, although they weren't bigger
than coal hods. It was heated by a furnace and lighted by electricity
and there were stained glass panels either side of the front door.

The rent was forty dollars a month and I signed a three years' lease
before I left. The next week was a busy one for us both. We bought
almost a thousand dollars' worth of furniture on the installment plan
and even then we didn't seem to get more than the bare necessities. I
hadn't any idea that house furnishings cost so much. But if the bill
had come to five times that I wouldn't have cared. The installments
didn't amount to very much a week and I already saw Morse promoted and
myself filling his position at twenty-five hundred. I hadn't yet got
over the feeling I had at eighteen that life was a big adventure and
that a man with strong legs and a good back _couldn't_ lose. With Ruth
at my side I bought like a king. Though I never liked the idea of
running into debt this didn't seem like a debt. I had only to look
into her dear blue eyes to feel myself safe in buying the store
itself. Ruth herself sometimes hesitated but, as I told her, we might
as well start right and once for all as to go at it half heartedly.

The following Saturday we were married. My vacation wasn't due for
another month so we decided not to wait. The old folks came down from
the farm and we just called in a clergyman and were married in the
front parlor of the aunt's house. It was both very simple and very
solemn. For us both the ceremony meant the taking of a sacred oath of
so serious a nature as to forbid much lightheartedness. And yet I did
wish that the father and mother and aunt had not dressed in black and
cried during it all. Ruth wore a white dress and looked very beautiful
and didn't seem afraid. As for me, my knees trembled and I was chalk
white. I think it was the old people and the room, for when it was
over and we came out into the sunshine again I felt all right except a
bit light-headed. I remember that the street and the houses and the
cars seemed like very small matters.

CHAPTE