had to be. It was fate. Nothing could a-kept us apart."

They sat on in a silence that was quick with unuttered love, till she
felt him slowly draw her more closely and his lips come near to her ear
as they whispered: "What do you say we go to bed?"

Many evenings they spent like this, varied with an occasional dance,
with trips to the Orpheum and to Bell's Theater, or to the moving
picture shows, or to the Friday night band concerts in City Hall Park.
Often, on Sunday, she prepared a lunch, and he drove her out into the
hills behind Prince and King, whom Billy's employer was still glad to
have him exercise.

Each morning Saxon was called by the alarm clock. The first morning
he had insisted upon getting up with her and building the fire in the
kitchen stove. She gave in the first morning, but after that she laid
the fire in the evening, so that all that was required was the touching
of a match to it. And in bed she compelled him to remain for a last
little doze ere she called him for breakfast. For the first several
weeks she prepared his lunch for him. Then, for a week, he came down
to dinner. After that he was compelled to take his lunch with him. It
depended on how far distant the teaming was done.

"You're not starting right with a man," Mary cautioned. "You wait on him
hand and foot. You'll spoil him if you don't watch out. It's him that
ought to be waitin' on you."

"He's the bread-winner," Saxon replied. "He works harder than I, and
I've got more time than I know what to do with--time to burn. Besides,
I want to wait on him because I love to, and because... well, anyway, I
want to."

CHAPTER II

Despite the fastidiousness of her housekeeping, Saxon, once she had
systematized it, found time and to spare on her hands. Especially during
the periods in which her husband carried his lunch and there was no
midday meal to prepare, she had a number of hours each day to herself.
Trained for years to the routine of factory and laundry work, she could
not abide this unaccustomed idleness. She could not bear to sit and do
nothing, while she could not pay calls on her girlhood friends, for they
still worked in factory and laundry. Nor was she acquainted with the
wives of the neighborhood, save for one strange old woman who lived
in the house next door and with whom Saxon had exchanged snatches of
conversation over the backyard division fence.

One time-consuming diversion of which Saxon took advantage was free