“Laws be blowed!” exclaimed Dick. “If I was willing to marry you now I might change my mind before that time.”
“But you will not, though. Two years hence we will be man and wife, and you will be the happiest man in the Land of Hez, and I will be the happiest woman!”
Then there was a pause, after which Olive, as she desired Dick to call her, poured out some more of the wine and handed it to her lover.
As soon as the boy had drunk it, the same feeling of content, as on former occasions, came over him, and he grew talkative.
“Tell me about this wonderful country, Olive,” said he, taking her by the hand.
“That I will gladly do, Dick,” replied she, with equal familiarity, and she proceeded to relate the same legend as told by Andrew Jones a short time before.
“Do you believe that story, Olive?” he asked.
“I hardly know whether I do or not. It seems so strange and unnatural. Yet Roderique de Amilo was as he is now as long ago as the oldest of our people can remember.”
“How is it that he does not rule the Land of Hez himself?”
“Because, the legend states, that he agreed with his beautiful wife that it should forever be ruled by woman. It was for that reason that she plunged into the pool, thinking it would prove a perpetual life to her.”