r you couldn't have found a man to
please me better. Seeing David this way, day by day, I've come to know
him through and through and he's true, straight down to the core."

"Of course he is," she answered, tilting her chin with the old
sauciness that this morning looked a little forlorn. "I wouldn't have
liked him if he hadn't been."

"Oh, Missy, you're such a wise little woman."

She glanced at him quickly, recognizing the tone, and to-day, with her
new heavy heart, dreading it.

"Now, father, don't laugh at me. This is all very serious."

"Serious! It's the most serious thing that ever happened in the world,
in our world. And if I was smiling--I'll lay a wager I wasn't
laughing--it was because I'm so happy. You don't know what this means
to me. I've wanted it so much that I've been afraid it wasn't coming
off. And then I thought it must, for it's my girl's happiness and
David's and back of theirs mine."

"Well, then, if you're happy, I'm happy."

This time his smile was not bantering, only loving and tender. He did
not dream that her spirit might not be as glad as his looking from the
height of middle-age to a secured future. He had been a man of a
single love, ignorant save of that one woman, and she so worshiped and
wondered at that there had been no time to understand her. Insulated
in the circle of his own experience he did not guess that to an
unawakened girl the engagement morn might be dark with clouds.

"Love and youth," he said dreamily, "oh, Susan, it's so beautiful!
It's Eden come again when God walked in the garden. And it's so short.
_Eheu Fugaces_! You've just begun to realize how wonderful it is, just
said to yourself 'This is life--this is what I was born for,' when it's
over. And then you begin to understand, to look back, and see that it
was not what you were born for. It was only the beginning that was to
give you strength for the rest--the prairie all trees and flowers, with
the sunlight and the breeze on the grass."

"It sounds like this journey, like the Emigrant Trail."

"That's what I was thinking. The beautiful start gives you courage for
the mountains. The memory of it carries you over the rough places,
gives you life in your heart when you come to the desert where it's all
parched and bare. And you and your companion go on, fighting against
the hardships, bound closer and closer by the struggle. You learn to
give up, to think of the other one, and then you say,