“Let’s” agreed Sally valiantly.
“You’d really be willing to live—like that?” David marveled, his head jerking toward the dreary little shack they were leaving behind them.
“If—if you were with me, it wouldn’t matter,” Sally answered seriously.
“You’ll never have to!” David exulted, sweeping her to his breast and kissing her regardless of the fact that the Buckners were still watching them. “I promise you it will never be as bad as that, honey. But maybe Jim Buckner promised Millie the same thing,” he added in a troubled, uncertain voice.
“I’ll never be sorry,” Sally promised huskily.
They reached Canfield a few minutes after nine and had no difficulty in finding the county court house, for its grounds formed the “square” which was the hub of the small town. An old man pottering about the tobacco-stained halls with a mop and pail directed them to the marriage license bureau, without waiting for David to frame his embarrassed question.
The clerk, a pale, very thin young man, whose weak eyes were enlarged by thick-lensed glasses, thrust a printed form through the wicket of his cage, and went on with his work upon a big ledger, having apparently not the slightest interest in foolish young couples who wanted to commit matrimony.
“Answer all the questions,” the clerk mumbled, without looking up. “Table in the corner over there. Pen and ink.”
Sally and David were laughing helplessly by the time they had taken seats at the pine table in the corner. “Proving you’re never as important as you think you are,” David chuckled. “Let’s see. ‘Place of residence?’ I suppose we’ll have to put Capital City. But that chap certainly doesn’t give a continental who we are or where we’re from. We’re all in the day’s work with him, thank heaven. Don’t forget to put your age at eighteen, darling.”
When they presented their filled-in and signed application for a marriage license, the clerk accepted it with supreme indifference, glancing at it and drew a stack of marriage license blanks toward him. As he began to write in the names, however, he frowned thoughtfully, then peered through the bars of his cage at the blushing, frightened couple.