“You can’t hurt that dress, can you, Sue?” said Billy, busy with the key.

“No!” Susan said, eager for the commonplace.  “It’s made for just this!”

“Then hustle and unpack the eats, will you?  And I’ll start a fire!”

“Two seconds!” Susan took off her hat, and enveloped herself in a checked apron.  There was a heavy chill in the room; there was that blank forbidding air in the dusty, orderly room that follows months of unuse.  Susan unpacked, went to and fro briskly; the claims of housekeeping reassured and soothed her.

Billy made thundering journeys for wood.  Presently there was a flare of lighted papers in the fireplace, and the heartening snap and crackle of wood.  The room was lighted brilliantly; delicious odors of sap mingled with the fragrance from Susan’s coffee pot.

“Oh, keen idea!” said Billy, when she brought the little table close to the hearth.  “Gee, that’s pretty!” he added, as she shook over it the little fringed tablecloth, and laid the blue plates neatly at each side.

“Isn’t this fun?” It burst spontaneously from the bride.

“Fun!” Billy flung down an armful of logs, and came to stand beside her, watching the flames.  “Lord, Susan,” he said, with simple force, “if you only knew how perfect you seem to me!  If you only knew how many years I’ve been thinking how beautiful you were, and how clever, and how far above me-----I”

“Go right on thinking so, darling!” said Susan, practically, escaping from his arm, and taking her place behind the cold chicken.  “Do ye feel like ye could eat a little mite, Pa?” asked she.

“Well, I dunno, mebbe I could!” William answered hilariously.  “Say, Sue, oughtn’t those blankets be out here, airing?” he added suddenly.

“Oh, do let’s have dinner first.  They make everything look so horrid,” said young Mrs. Oliver, composedly carving.  “They can dry while we’re doing the dishes.”

“You know, until we can afford a maid, I’m going to help you every night with the dishes,” said Billy.

“Well, don’t put on airs about it,” Susan said briskly.  “Or I’ll leave you to do them entirely alone, while I run over the latest songs on the PIARNO.  Here now, deary, chew this nicely, and when I’ve had all I want, perhaps I’ll give you some more!”

“Sue, aren’t we going to have fun—­doing things like this all our lives?”

“I think we are,” said Susan demurely.  It was strange, it had its terrifying phases, but it was curiously exciting and wonderful, too, this wearing of a man’s ring and his name, and being alone with him up here in the great forest.

“This is life—­this is all good and right,” the new-made wife said to herself, with a flutter at her heart.  And across her mind there flitted a fragment of the wedding-prayer, “in shamefacedness grave.”  “I will be grave,” thought Susan.  “I will be a good wife, with God’s help!”

Again morning found the cabin flooded with sunlight, and for all their happy days there the sun shone, and summer silences made the woods seem like June.