The train which bore Joe and his bride on their wedding journey clanked slowly through the yards following the line of the river. As it looped around a curve they could see, looking backward from the rear platform of the last coach which they had to themselves, the mills of Bill Crooks and of Joe Kent each flying a flag from the topmost point, the silver of the flowing water checkered with the black lines of the long booms and the herds of brown logs inside them. In the mills not a wheel turned that day. But steam was in the boilers, for as they looked it poured white from the roofs of the engine houses and the bellowing howls of two fire sirens bade them a joyous farewell.
Jack slipped her hand in Joe’s.
“Are you glad?”
“Glad it’s over? You bet I am!”
“No—glad we’re married?”
“That’s a nice question. And you know the answer.”
“Of course I do,” she admitted happily. “I suppose a wedding trip is a fine thing. Anyway, it’s conventional. But—I’ll be glad to come back home.”
“Same here,” he agreed. “There’s lot to be done—a holy lot. I have to get right down to work. I want to take all the weight I can off your father’s shoulders. That’s up to me. Then, when you come to running two mills under one management, there must be all sorts of economies possible, if a fellow could only find out what they are. I don’t want to let Wright do all the finding out for me. Yes, I’ll be pretty busy.”
“Well, you like the work. That’s the main thing.”
“That’s so,” he admitted. “I like it better all the time. I never knew what real fun was till I had to hustle for myself. A year ago I was no better than a big kid. I could feed myself and dress myself if somebody handed me the price, and that just about let me out. And at that I thought I was having a good time. A good time? Huh! Why, I didn’t know I was alive. Oh, well ... we’ll cut out business on this trip—not talk of it or think of it at all. Shall we?”