Part 25 (1/2)

. I had not re-opened my suit. I had accepted her decision. But the old picture would come back, and this Christmas morning as it swam before my eyes it stirred within me an immeasurable poignancy of spirit.

”Merry Christmas!” shouted Marjorie, poking her head into my room.

Marjorie was going through a time of strangely mixed emotions. Her heart was light on her own account and heavy on mine, and in these days she found the bridge between laughter and tears an extremely narrow one.

Perhaps it was for that reason that her shout of ”Merry Christmas!”

ended in something like a sob, and, with a little rush, she plunged on to my bed and threw her arms about me; she wrapped them around my neck and shoulders and drew my face to hers. And as her cheek lay against mine a little warm trickle of moisture wended its way down, upon, and across my lips, and I felt her frame tremble as it rested near me.

”Not crying, Marjorie; not crying, on this of all mornings!” I exclaimed, although my own throat was full. ”Not crying, dear--on my account?”

To that question she snuggled closer, and after a little I heard her whispering in my ear. ”It will come all right in time, Brother mine,”

she said; ”all right in time. I can't think--I can't believe--anything else. Don't you feel--don't you _know_--that it will?” And so to soothe her, and that her greatest day might not be spoiled, I said I knew it would come all right in time, but there was a stone between my lungs and a band of iron about my chest.

Marjorie kissed me on the lips, then raised her face and dried her eyes.

Suddenly she sprang to her feet, and I could not but admit how very good she was to look upon. Her dark hair hung loose about her shoulders; she allowed herself no curl-paper nonsense, and indeed no device could have added to the beauty of her waving locks. She was still in her night dress, although she had drawn on something warm about her feet, and, like the good wife she was always to be, she had started the fire--a duty which I admitted properly fell to the man of the house. Perhaps it is because a man _should_ start the fire that he so greatly enjoys having his wife do it. I could hear the poplar sticks crackling as I lay watching her through moist and dreamy eyes. She was good to look upon; so different from Jean, but still so good!

”Hustle up, Frank,” she cried, with a sudden return to her normal manner. ”We have a lot to do to-day.”

It was not until after our midday meal that I went over to Twenty-two.

Jean was in her room, but I mustered the spirit to chaff Jack with such a mingling of good wishes and humorous sallies as my brain could command, and we finished the whole with an impromptu sparring match in the middle of the kitchen floor.

”Watch your beak, old Sitting Crow!” I commanded, ”or I'll send you to the minister with a busted mug,” and I swung on him with enthusiasm. But Jack was handy with his fists, and something thumped in my eye like a piledriver.

”Aha!” said he. ”The first of the wedding decorations. Let's make it a pair.”

But at that moment Jean came out, looking so radiantly sorrowful, if one can look that way, that the glory of Marjorie seemed as the glory of one of the lesser planets against the sun. She came to me with an outstretched hand.

”Merry Christmas, Frank,” she said, looking me squarely in the face.

”Why, what has happened to your eye?”

”I was just practising,” said Jack, ”and I want to exhibit this specimen of my handiwork to Marjorie before we are married. It is as well that she should understand----”

But Jean was gone in quest of b.u.t.ter, with which she rubbed my swelling eye, and the caress of her fingers was worth the punch it had cost.

It was now time to hitch the oxen to the rough sleigh or jumper which Jack and I had built. Into this the four of us could with some difficulty be packed, and as we reckoned it would take at least an hour for Buck and Bright to break trail to Spoof's, we loaded up and started on our journey at a little before two. Spoof had insisted that the ceremony should take place at his house, if for no other reason that there might be a honeymoon trip as far as from Two to Fourteen, and the minister was expected at three.

As the snow-clad prairie crept by to the leisurely plodding of Buck and Bright the mound which marked Spoof's house and stable gradually defined itself against the bright grey background of the December afternoon.

Spoof had been on the look-out, and while our oxen were still puffing and blowing at a considerable distance from the shack we saw him coming over the drifts with his great, rapid, English stride. He was beside us in a few minutes, his wind-tanned face wreathed in smiles, his white teeth gleaming under a short, sandy mustache to which of late he had been giving some encouragement.

”Merry Christmas!” he cried. ”The merriest ever--ever!” He held out both arms, and we all shook hands at once, and I suspect that the bride-elect pressed a chaste kiss upon his cheek. But Jack, as lawful owner, could afford to be generous. Jean took no such liberty. That would have been different.

The inside of Spoof's shack was always an example of orderly overcrowding. It was full of useless furniture, inappropriate clothing, fire-arms, saddles and bridles, cartridge belts, smoker's equipment, tobacco tins, photographs, magazines, and an endless a.s.sortment of miscellaneous knicknacks, all carefully placed and tended. Even when Spoof occupied it alone it was something of a mystery where he found s.p.a.ce for himself in the midst of his possessions. But now Jean and Marjorie and Jack and I were crowded in as well, only to find a number of others already there.

Our eyes had not yet become accustomed to the semi-twilight of the interior when a familiar voice saluted us. ”Merry Christmas, Sittin'

Crow, an' ev'rybody,” it said. ”Didn't I warn you'se what 'ud happen?”

It was Jake. He was sitting perched like a toad on the wood-box where he could expectorate with convenience into the ashpan of the stove. ”We dragged him into the centre of the floor and in the melee that followed Jake lost his footing and at least three of us were precipitated with him.

”Oh, save my husband, save my husband!” cried Bella Donna, in mock alarm, while Spoof gravely remarked that perhaps the cogitation nut had come loose.