ilent. I had been reading to
her, and she was busy with some delicate embroidery. The crickets were
chirping sleepily in the grass at our feet, and the jays calling harshly
seemed warning us of the passing of summer and the coming on of frost.

"Let the wedding day be soon," I pleaded as we rose to return to camp.
"I am nearing the dead-line. I am almost forty years old--I can't afford
to wait. I want you to come to me now--at once. The old folks are
waiting for you. They want you for Thanksgiving Day. Your presence
would make them happier than any other good fortune in this world."

She understood my way of putting the argument. She knew that I was
veiling my own eagerness under my mother's need, and after a little
reflection she said, "I am going out to my father's home in Kansas. You
may come for me there on the twenty-third of November. That is--if you
still want me at that time."

The end of the camp season was at hand; everybody was packing up, and so
my girl and I turned with deep regret from the golden halls of our
sylvan meeting-place. "This is my Indian summer," I said to her, "and
that you may never have cause to regret the decision which this day has
brought to you, is my earnest hope."

More than twenty years have gone over our heads, and as I write these
lines our silver wedding is not far off. Our lives have not been all
sunshine, but Zulime has met all storms with a brave sweetness, which I
cannot overpraise. If she has regrets, she does not permit me to know
them. My poverty--which persists--has not embittered her or caused her,
so far as I know, a single mood of self-commiseration.

CHAPTER NINE

A Judicial Wedding

On reaching my Elm Street home the next day, I was surprised and deeply
gratified to find on my desk a letter from William Dean Howells, in
which he said: "I am at the Palmer House. I hope you will come to see me
soon, for I start for Kansas on a lecture trip in a few days."

Although I had long been urging that he should come to Chicago, he had
steadfastly declined to accept a lecture engagement west of Ohio, and I
could not quite understand what had led him so far afield as Kansas. I
hastened to call upon him, and, at the first appropriate pause in the
conversation, I spoke to him of my engagement. "Miss Taft loves your
books and would keenly appreciate the honor of meeting you."

With instant perception of my wish to have him know my future wife, he
replied, "My dear fe