“Yes, but, Wes—­I wish you’d promise me something.”

“Promise you anything.”

“Then—­promise me not to get mad and beat the horses any more or holler at Unc’ Zenas.  I don’t like it.”

“Annie, you little simp—­what’s the matter with you?  A fellow’s got to let off steam once in a while, and if you’d been pestered like I have with Unc’ Zenas’s ornery trifling spells and old Pomp’s general cussedness, you’d wonder that I don’t get mad and stay mad every minute.  Don’t let’s talk any more about it.  Say, look there—­there’s a scarlet tanager!  Ain’t it pretty?  Shyest bird there is, but up here in the woods there’s a couple pairs ’most every year.  Pull that old newspaper up round the earth a little, so’s I can get a better holt of it.  That’s the girl.  Gee, I never knew what fun it’d be to have a wife who’d be so darn chummy as you are.  How d’you like your husband, Mrs. Dean?  Ain’t it about time you said something nice to the poor feller instead of scolding his lights and liver out of place on a nice peaceful Sabbath day?  You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

She pushed back the fear devil and answered his smile.

’No, sir, I’m not going to say anything nice to my husband.  I’ll tell you a secret about him—­he’s awful stuck on himself now.”

“Why shouldn’t he be?  Look who he picked out to marry.”

Who could stand against such beguiling?  Annie looked up at him and saw his Dean mark give a little mocking twitch as if it rejoiced in her thwarting.

But she said no more; and they planted the wild clematis with its black woods earth beneath at the side of the front door, and Annie twisted its pliable green stems round one of the posts of the little benched entrance.

Her hands moved deftly, and Wes, who had finished firming the earth about the plant, watched them.

“Your little paws are gettin’ awful brown,” he said.  “I remember that first day, in the shop, how white they were—­and how quick they moved.  You wrapped up them aprons like somethin’ was after you, and I was trying to get my nerve up to speak to you.”

“Tryin’ to get up your nerve!  I reckon it wasn’t much effort.  There, don’t that vine look’s if it grew there of itself?”

“Yeh—­it looks fine.”  He sat down on the bench and pulled her down beside him, his arm about her.  “Annie, baby, are y’ happy?”

She put her cheek against his shoulder and shut her eyes.

“I’m so happy I wouldn’t darst be any happier.”

“You’re not sorry you picked up with me so quick?  You don’t wish’t you’d stayed down in Balt’mer and got you a city beau?”

“I’d rather be with you—­here—­than any place in the world.  And, Wes—­I think you’re the best and kindest man that ever lived.  I wouldn’t have you changed, any way, one little bit.”

She defied her fears and that mocking, twitching vein with the words.

“Same here.  Made to order for me, you were.  First minute I looked in those round blue eyes of yours I knew it.”