“And best of all, David, always with you, working with you, taking care of you,—­always—­ Oh, I am tired, but it is not so bad being tired out when you’ve done your level best.”

“Carol, it is fine, labor is, it is life.  I can’t imagine an existence without it.  Going to bed, worn out with the day, rising in the morning ready to plunge in over one’s ears.  It is the only real life there is.  How do people endure a drifting through the days, with never anything to do and never worn enough to sleep?”

“I don’t know,” said Carol promptly.  “They aren’t alive, that’s sure.  But let’s go to bed.  David, please get off that floor and stop coughing.”

David obediently got up, lightly dusting his trousers as he did so.  Then he lifted his arms high and breathed deeply.  “Anyhow it is better to be tired than lazy, isn’t it?”

CHAPTER VIII

REACTION

“Will you have this woman?”

David’s clear, low voice sounded over the little church, and the bride lifted confident, trusting eyes to his face.  The people in the pews leaned forward.  They had glanced approvingly at the slender, dark-eyed girl in her bridal white, but now every eye was centered on the minister.  The hand in which he held the Book was white, blue veined, the fingers long and thin.  His eyes were nervously bright, with faint circles beneath them.

David looked sick.

So the glowing, sweet faced bride was neglected and the groom received scant attention.  The minister cleared his throat slightly, and the service went smoothly on to the end.

But the sigh of relief that went up at its conclusion betokened not so much satisfaction that another young couple were setting forth on the troubled, tempting waters of matrimony, as that David had finished another service and all might yet be well.

Carol, half way back in the church, had heard not one word of the service.

“David is an angel, but I do wish he were a little less heavenly,” she thought passionately.  “He—­makes me nervous.”

The carriage was at the door to take the minister and his wife to the Daniels home for the bridal reception, but David said, “Tell him to take us to the manse first, Carol.  I’ve got to rest a minute.  I’m tired to-night.”

In the living-room of the manse he carefully removed the handsome black coat in which he had been graduated from the Seminary in Chicago, and in which a little later he had been ordained for the ministry and installed in his church in the Heights.  Still later he had worn it at his marriage.  David hung it over the back of a chair, saying as he did so: 

“Wearing pretty well, isn’t it?  It may be called upon to officiate in other crises for me, so it behooves me to husband it well.”

Then he dropped heavily on the davenport before the fireplace, with Carol crouching on a cushion beside him, stroking his hand.