“Billum, if only we didn’t have to go back!” said William’s wife, seated on a stump, and watching him clean trout for their supper, in the soft close of an afternoon.

“Darling, I love to have you sitting there, with your little feet tucked under you, while I work,” said William enthusiastically.

“I know,” Susan agreed absently.  “But don’t you wish we didn’t?” she resumed, after a moment.

“Well, in a way I do,” Billy answered, stooping to souse a fish in the stream beside which he was kneeling.  “But there’s the ‘Protest’ you know,—­there’s a lot to do!  And we’ll come back here, every year.  We’ll work like mad for eleven months, and then come up here and loaf.”

“But, Bill, how do we know we can manage it financially?” said Susan prudently.

“Oh, Lord, we’ll manage it!” he answered comfortably.  “Unless, of course, you want to have all the kids brought up in white stockings,” grinned Billy, “and have their pictures taken every month!”

“Up here,” said Susan dreamily, yet very earnestly too, “I feel so sure of myself!  I love the simplicity, I love the work, I could entertain the King of England right here in this forest and not be ashamed!  But when we go back, Bill, and I realize that Isabel Wallace may come in and find me pressing my window curtains, or that we honestly can’t afford to send someone a handsome wedding present, I’ll begin to be afraid.  I know that now and then I’ll find myself investing in finger-bowls or salted almonds, just because other people do.”

“Well, that’s not actionable for divorce, woman!”

Susan laughed, but did not answer.  She sat looking idly down the long aisles of the forest, palpitating to-day with a rush of new fragrance, new color, new song.  Far above, beyond the lacing branches of the redwoods, a buzzard hung motionless in a blue, blue sky.

“Bill,” she said presently, “I could live at a settlement house, and be happy all my life showing other women how to live.  But when it comes to living down among them, really turning my carpets and scrubbing my own kitchen, I’m sometimes afraid that I’m not big enough woman to be happy!”

“Why, but, Sue dear, there’s a decent balance at the bank.  We’ll build on the Panhandle lots some day, and something comes in from the blue-prints, right along.  If you get your own dinner five nights a week, we’ll be trotting downtown on other nights, or over at the Carrolls’, or up here.”  Billy stood up.  “There’s precious little real poverty in the world,” he said, cheerfully, “we’ll work out our list of expenses, and we’ll stick to it!  But we’re going to prove how easy it is to prosper, not how easy it is to go under.  We’re the salt of the earth!”

“You’re big; I’m not,” said Susan, rubbing her head against him as he sat beside her on the stump.  But his nearness brought her dimples back, and the sober mood passed.

“Bill, if I die and you remarry, promise me, oh, promise! that you won’t bring her here!”