“But you don’t even know what the trouble is.”

“I do—­it’s about your father and mother—­when they were married.”

“How did you know?”

“I can’t tell you now, but I will soon.  Look here, you can believe what I tell you, can’t you?”

“Yes, I can do that.”

“Well, then, you listen.  Your father and mother were married in the right way, and there wasn’t a single bit of crookedness about it.  I wouldn’t tell you if I didn’t know and couldn’t prove it to you in a little while.  Say, there’s one of our wagon-trains coming along here toward Salt Lake next Monday.  It’s coming out of its way on purpose to pick me up.  I’ll promise to have it proved to you by that time.  Now, is that fair?  Can you believe me?”

She looked up at him, her face bright again.

“Oh, I do believe you!  You don’t know how glad you make me.  It was an awful thing—­oh, you are a dear”—­and full upon his lips she kissed the astounded young man, holding him fast with an arm about his neck.  “You’ve made me all over new—­I was feeling so wretched—­and of course I can’t see how you know anything about it, but I know you are telling the truth.”  Again she kissed him with the utmost cordiality.  Then she stood up to arrange her hair, her face full of the joy of this assurance.  The young man saw that she had forgotten both him and his religious perplexities, and he did not wish her to be entirely divested of concern for him at this moment.

“But how about me?  Here I am, lost if I do and lost if I don’t.  You better sit down here again and see if there isn’t some way I can get that crown of glory.”

She sat down by him, instantly sobered from her own joy, and calmly gave him a hand to hold.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” she said, frankly.  “You wait awhile.  Don’t do anything right away.  I’ll have to ask father.”  And then as he reached over to pick up the Book of Mormon,—­“No, let’s not read any more to-day.  Let’s sit a little while and only think about things.”  She was so free from embarrassment that he began to doubt if he had been so very deeply clever, after all, in suggesting the relationship between them.  But after she had mused awhile, she seemed to perceive for the first time that he was very earnestly holding both of her hands.  She blushed, and suddenly withdrew them.  Whereat he was more pleased than when she had passively let them lie.  He approached the matter of salvation for himself once more.

“Of course I can wait awhile for you to find out the rights of this thing, but I’m afraid I can’t be baptised even if you tell me to be—­even if you want me to obey the Lord and marry some pretty little light-complected, yellow-haired thing afterwards—­after I’d married my first wife.  Fact is, I don’t believe I could.  Probably I’d care so much for the first one that I’d have blinders on for all the other women in the world.  She’d have me tied down with the red ribbon in her hair”—­he touched the red ribbon in her own, by way of illustration—­“just like I can tie the biggest steer you ever saw with that little silk rag of mine—­hold him, two hind legs and one fore, so he can’t budge an inch.  I’d just like to see some little, short, kind of plump, pretty yellow-haired thing come between us.”