from a smoking pistol, able to bid her farewell--and she could not let him go. At the last white-hot edge of ordeal, it was she who renounced, and he who had his way. Nevertheless she found much more than enough, in spite of the sigh that now and again breathed through her happiness when she would watch him with eyes fuller of love than of understanding.
They could not speak of that grim wedding eve for a long while after; but the mountains brought them together upon all else in the world and their own lives. At the end they loved each other doubly more than at the beginning, because of these added confidences which they exchanged and shared. It was a new bliss to her to know a man’s talk and thoughts, to be given so much of him; and to him it was a bliss still greater to melt from that reserve his lonely life had bred in him. He never would have guessed so much had been stored away in him, unexpressed till now. They did not want to go to Vermont and leave these mountains, but the day came when they had to turn their backs upon their dream. So they came out into the plains once more, well established in their familiarity, with only the journey still lying between themselves and Bennington.
“If you could,” she said, laughing. “If only you could ride home like this.”
“With Monte and my six-shooter?” he asked. “To your mother?”
“I don’t think mother could resist the way you look on a horse.
But he said “It this way she’s fearing, I will come.”
“I have made one discovery,” she said. “You are fonder of good clothes than I am.”
He grinned. “I cert’nly like ’em. But don’t tell my friends. They would say it was marriage. When you see what I have got for Bennington’s special benefit, you--why, you’ll just trust your husband more than ever.”
She undoubtedly did. After he had put on one particular suit, she arose and kissed him where he stood in it.
“Bennington will be sorrowful,” he said. “No wild-west show, after all. And no ready-made guy, either.” And he looked at himself in the glass with unbidden pleasure.
“How did you choose that?” she asked. “How did you know that homespun was exactly the thing for you?”
“Why, I have been noticing. I used to despise an Eastern man because his clothes were not Western. I was very young then, or maybe not so very young, as very--as what you saw I was when you first came to Bear Creek. A Western man is a good thing. And he generally knows that. But he has a heap to learn. And he generally don’t know that. So I took to watching the Judge’s Eastern visitors. There was that Mr. Ogden especially, from New Yawk--the gentleman that was there the time when I had to sit up all night with the missionary, yu’ know. His clothes pleased me best of all. Fit him so well, and nothing flash. I got my ideas, and when I knew I was going to marry you, I sent my measure East--and I and the tailor are old enemies now.”
Bennington probably was disappointed. To see get out of the train merely a tall man with a usual straw hat, and Scotch homespun suit of a rather better cut than most in Bennington--this was dull. And his conversation--when he indulged in any--seemed fit to come inside the house.
Mrs. Flynt took her revenge by sowing broadcast her thankfulness that poor Sam Bannett had been Molly’s rejected suitor. He had done so much better for himself. Sam had married a rich Miss Van Scootzer, of the second families of Troy; and with their combined riches this happy couple still inhabit the most expensive residence in Hoosic Falls.