looking out on
the rain. The picture of herself and David, alone in a log cabin
somewhere on the other side of the world, caused a sudden return of
yesterday's dejection. It rushed back upon her in a flood under which
her heart declined into bottomless depths. She felt as if actually
sinking into some dark abyss of loneliness and that she must clutch at
her father and Daddy John to stay her fall.

"We won't be alone," with a note of protest making her voice plaintive.
"My father and Daddy John will be there. I couldn't be separated from
them. I'd never get over missing them. They've been with me always."

Bella did not notice the tone, or maybe saw beyond it.

"You won't miss them when you're married," she said with her benign
content. "Your husband will be enough."

Lucy, with romance instead of a husband, agreed to this, and arranged
the programme for the future as she would have had it:

"They'll probably live near you in tents. And you'll see them often;
ride over every few days. But you'll want your own log house just for
yourselves."

This time Susan did not answer, for she was afraid to trust her voice.
She pretended a sudden interest in the prospect while the unbearable
picture rose before her mind--she and David alone, while her father and
Daddy John were somewhere else in tents, somewhere away from her, out
of reach of her hands and her kisses, not there to laugh with her and
tease her and tell her she was a tyrant, only David loving her in an
unintelligible, discomforting way and wanting to read poetry and admire
sunsets. The misery of it gripped down into her soul. It was as the
thought of being marooned on a lone sand bar to a free buccaneer. They
never could leave her so; they never could have the heart to do it.
And anger against David, the cause of it, swelled in her. It was he
who had done it all, trying to steal her away from the dear, familiar
ways and the people with whom she had been so happy.

Lucy looked at her with curious eyes, in which there was admiration and
a touch of envy.

"You must be awfully happy?" she said.

"Awfully," answered Susan, swallowing and looking at the rain.

When she went back to her own wagon she found a consultation in
progress. Daddy John, streaming from every fold, had just returned
from the head of the caravan, where he had been riding with the pilot.
From him he had heard that the New York Company on good roads, in fair
weather, made twenty