The house, too, was all their own.  Nobody upstairs; nobody downstairs but the servants; even the emptiness of daddy’s room, so grewsome in the old days, brought a certain feeling of delight.  “Just you and me,” as they said a dozen times a day to each other.  And then the long talks on that blessed old sofa with its cushions—­(what a wonderful old sofa it was, and how much it had heard); talks about when she was a girl—­as if she had ever passed the age; and when he was a boy; and of what they both thought and did in that blissful state of innocence and inexperience.  Talks about the bungalow they would build some day—­that bungalow which Garry had toppled over—­and how it would be furnished; and whether they could not persuade the landlord to sell them the dear sofa and move it out there bodily; talks about their life during the coming winter, and whether she should visit Aunt Felicia’s—­and if so, whether Jack would come too; and if she didn’t, wouldn’t it be just as well for Jack to have some place in Morfordsburg where he could find a bed in case he got storm-bound and couldn’t get back to the cabin that same night.  All kinds and conditions and sorts of talks that only two lovers enjoy, and for which only two lovers can find the material.

Sometimes she thought he might be too lonely and neglected at the log-cabin.  Then she would make believe she was going to ask daddy to let them be married right away, insisting that two rooms were enough for them, and that she herself would do the washing and ironing and the cooking, at which Jack would laugh over the joy of it all, conjuring up in his mind the pattern of apron she would wear and how pretty her bare arms would be bending over the tub, knowing all the time that he would no more have allowed her to do any one of these things than he would have permitted her to chop the winter’s wood.

Most of these day dreams, plots, and imaginings were duly reported by letter to Miss Felicia to see what she thought of them all.  For the dear lady’s opposition had long since broken down.  In these letters Ruth poured out her heart as she did to no one except Jack; each missive interspersed with asides as to how dear Jack was, and how considerate, and how it would not be a very long time before she would soon get the other half of the dear lady’s laces, now that daddy and Jack (the boy had been given an interest in the business) were going to make lots of money on the new work—­to all of which Miss Felicia replied that love in a garret was what might be expected of fools, but that love in a log-cabin could only be practised by lunatics.

It was toward the close of this pre-honey-moon—­it lasted only ten days, but it was full moon every hour and no clouds—­when, early one morning—­before nine o’clock, really—­a night message was handed to Jack.  It had been sent to the brick office, but the telegraph boy, finding that building closed and abandoned, had delivered it to Mrs. Hicks, who, discovering it to be sealed, forwarded it at once, and by the same hand, to the MacFarlane house, known now to everybody as the temporary headquarters, especially in the day time, of the young superintendent who was going to marry the daughter—­“and there ain’t a nicer, nor a better, nor a prettier.”