ten he
owned them!--laundered them, and hung the trio, tied in tissue paper and
red ribbon, on the tree. That _was_ a Christmas!

He used to claim, too, that, as I got so excited over five cents' worth
of gum-drops, there was no use investing in a dollar's worth of French
mixed candy--especially if one hadn't the dollar. We always loved
tramping more than anything else, and just prowling around the streets
arm-in-arm, ending perhaps with an ice-cream soda. Not over-costly, any
of it. I have kept some little reminder of almost every spree we took in
our four engaged years--it is a book of sheer joy from cover to cover.
Except always, always the need of saying good-bye: it got so that it
seemed almost impossible to say it.

And then came the day when it did not have to be said each time--that
day of days, September 7, 1907, when we were married. Idaho for our
honeymoon had to be abandoned, as three weeks was the longest vacation
period we could wring from a soulless bond-house. But not even Idaho
could have brought us more joy than our seventy-five-mile trip up the
Rogue River in Southern Oregon. We hired an old buckboard and two
ancient, almost immobile, so-called horses,--they needed scant
attention,--and with provisions, gun, rods, and sleeping-bags, we
started forth. The woods were in their autumn glory, the fish were
biting, corn was ripe along the roadside, and apples--Rogue River
apples--made red blotches under every tree. "Help yourselves!" the
farmers would sing out, or would not sing out. It was all one to us.

I found that, along with his every other accomplishment, I had married
an expert camp cook. He found that he had married a person who could not
even boil rice. The first night out on our trip, Carl said, "You start
the rice while I tend to the horses." He knew I could not cook--I had
planned to take a course in Domestic Science on graduation; however, he
preferred to marry me earlier, inexperienced, than later, experienced.
But evidently he thought even a low-grade moron could boil rice. The
bride of his heart did not know that rice swelled when it boiled. We
were hungry, we would want lots of rice, so I put lots in. By the time
Carl came back I had partly cooked rice in every utensil we owned,
including the coffee-pot and the wash-basin. And still he loved me!

That honeymoon! Lazy horses poking unprodded along an almost deserted
mountain road; glimpses of the river lined with autumn reds and yellows;