the
train through the mountain woodland seemed to brush it away as a thing
unworthy of his vast surging happiness. He adored the lashes of Tilly's
eyes, which seemed to thwart his efforts to probe the eyes themselves;
the sweet curve of her lips; the hair which fell so gracefully over her
smooth white brow; the tiny brown freckles on her cheeks; the little
feet in the somewhat plain new shoes that shyly peeped out from beneath
the new gray skirt. A colored porter brought in some soft pillows, and
John secured one and placed it behind Tilly's head.

"There," he said, gently enough, "lean back on it. I'll bet you are
fagged out, after all you've done since you got up this morning."

"You mustn't make a baby of me," she mildly protested. "Remember I'm a
farmer's daughter who never has been petted."

"It is time you were coddled up a little, then," he answered, fervently.
"Somehow you look like a child to me, and a lonely one, too, going off
like this with a big no-account hulk of a man whom you have known only a
little while."

Tilly beamed at this. It was the quality she loved most in her husband.
She had a new purse and card-case combined in her lap, and he opened it,
finding only a few dimes and quarters in its immaculate interior.

"That will never do." He laughed, took from his own purse two
five-dollar bills and put them into hers as he added: "I never want you
to have to run to me for change. I despise that in any man, no matter
how long he's been married. A fellow's wife should be as free with the
money that comes in as he is. I've felt like knocking a man down many a
time for that very thing. I don't believe a delicate woman feels like
asking for every cent she spends. I'll watch this pocket-book, and if I
don't keep that much or more in it all the time it will be because I'm
dead broke, too sick to work, or unable to borrow it."

Tilly's face shed a smile that was tender and full of thought. "You are
the best man in the world," she said. "I don't believe many men, even
the ones that pretend to be polished and educated, would have thought of
that."

CHAPTER XXII

The train, which was slightly delayed, reached Ridgeville at two o'clock
the following morning. With his usual thoughtfulness Cavanaugh had
ordered a street-cab to be on hand to take the couple to their home, and
it was found waiting in the care of a half-asleep negro.

"Here is the key to the house," Cavanaugh said, as he handed it in