had just got myself out of the bath and into dry clothes when the
telephone rang. It was Carl. Could he come over to the house and spend
the rest of the afternoon? It was then about four-thirty. He came, and
from then on things were decidedly--different.

How I should love to go into the details of that Freshman year of mine!
I am happier right now writing about it than I have been in six months.
I shall not go into detail--only to say that the night of the Junior
Prom of my Freshman year Carl Parker asked me to marry him, and two days
later, up again in our hills, I said that I would. To think of that
now--to think of waiting two whole days to decide whether I would marry
Carl Parker or not!! And for fourteen years from the day I met him,
there was never one small moment of misunderstanding, one day that was
not happiness--except when we were parted. Perhaps there are people who
would consider it stupid, boresome, to live in such peace as that. All I
can answer is that it was _not_ stupid, it was _not_ boresome--oh, how
far from it! In fact, in those early days we took our vow that the one
thing we would never do was to let the world get commonplace for us;
that the time should never come when we would not be eager for the start
of each new day. The Kipling poem we loved the most, for it was the
spirit of both of us, was "The Long Trail." You know the last of it:--

The Lord knows what we may find, dear lass,
And the Deuce knows what we may do--
But we're back once more on the old trail,
our own trail, the out trail,
We're down, hull down, on the Long Trail--the
trail that is always new!

CHAPTER II

After we decided to get married, and that as soon as ever we could,--I
being a Freshman at the ripe and mature age of, as mentioned, just
eighteen years, he a Senior, with no particular prospects, not even sure
as yet what field he would go into,--we began discussing what we might
do and where we might go. Our main idea was to get as far away from
everybody as we could, and live the very fullest life we could, and at
last we decided on Persia. Why Persia? I cannot recall the steps now
that brought us to that conclusion. But I know that first Christmas I
sent Carl my picture in a frilled high-school graduation frock and a
silk Persian flag tucked behind it, and that flag remained always the
symbol for us that we would never let our lives get stale, never lose
the love