“Stop here and watch the creek,” said Billy, at the mill bridge.  Susan stopped, and they stood looking down at the foaming water, tumbling through barriers, and widening, in a ruffled circle, under the great wheel.

“Was there ever such a heavenly place, Billy?”

“Never,” he said, after a second.  Susan had time to think his voice a little deep and odd before he added, with an effort, “We’ll come back here often, won’t we?  After we’re married?”

“Oh, are we going to be married?” Susan said lightly.

“Well, aren’t we?” He quietly put his arm about her, as they stood at the rail, so that in turning her innocent, surprised eyes, she found his face very near.  Susan held herself away rigidly, dropped her eyes.  She could not answer.

“How about it, Sue?” he asked, very low and, looking up, she found that he was half-smiling, but with anxious eyes.  Suddenly she found her eyes brimming, and her lip shook.  Susan felt very young, a little frightened.

“Do you love me, Billy?” she faltered.  It was too late to ask it, but her heart suddenly ached with a longing to hear him say it.

“Love you I” he said scarcely above his breath.  “Don’t you know how I love you!  I think I’ve loved you ever since you came to our house, and I gave you my cologne bottle!”

There was no laughter in his tone, but the old memory brought laughter to them both.  Susan clung to him, and he tightened his arms about her.  Then they kissed each other.

Half an hour behind the others they came slowly down the home trail.  Susan had grown shy now and, although she held his hand childishly, she would not allow him to kiss her again.  The rapid march of events had confused her, and she amused him by a plea for time “to think.”

“Please, please don’t let them suspect anything tonight, Bill!” she begged.  “Not for months!  For we shall probably have to wait a long, long time!”

“I have a nerve to ask any girl to do it!” Billy said gloomily.

“You’re not asking any girl.  You’re asking me, you know!”

“But, darling, you honestly aren’t afraid?  We’ll have to count every cent for awhile, you know!”

“It isn’t as if I had been a rich girl,” Susan reminded him.

“But you’ve been a lot with rich people.  And we’ll have to live in some place in the Mission, like Georgie, Sue!”

“In the Mission perhaps, but not like Georgie!  Wait until you eat my dinners, and see my darling little drawing-room!  And we’ll go to dinner at Coppa’s and Sanguinetti’s, and come over to Sausalito for picnics,—­we’ll have wonderful times!  You’ll see!”

“I adore you,” said Billy, irrevelantly.

“Well,” Susan said, “I hope you do!  But I’ll tell you something I’ve been thinking, Billy,” she resumed dreamily, after a silence.

“And pwhats dthat, me dar-r-rlin’?”

“Why, I was thinking that I’d rather—–­” Susan began hesitatingly, “rather have my work cut out for me in this life!  That is, I’d rather begin at the bottom of the ladder, and work up to the top, than be at the top, through no merit of my own, and live in terror of falling to the bottom!  I believe, from what I’ve seen of other people, that we’ll succeed, and I think we’ll have lots of fun doing it!”