They immediately went to the hotel, where Dugan had engaged apartments for them, and that night Ida and her mother attended the theater for the first time in their lives. Miss Anderson, being escorted by Dugan, made the party complete.
Two days later Jack and Ida were quietly married in the parlor of the hotel where they had been stopping and Mr. Dugan and Miss Anderson were their attendants, just as Jack had planned. A few hours afterward they were on their way to Galveston under the care of Mr. Norton and Dugan, who occupied the smoking compartment, while the young couple were left alone to assume as much as was possible an air of indifference to the actions of their fellow passengers, who had in some mysterious way discovered the fact that a wedding had just occurred, and were enjoying themselves at the young couple's expense.
Mrs. Gully and Miss Anderson returned to their homes the following day, tired but happy and loaded down with trinkets, both useful and ornamental, which Mr. Norton, Jack and Ida had entrusted to their care for distribution among the family as a token of their best wishes.
Short messages and post cards mailed along the route were received from Jack and Ida in almost every mail, but it was nearly two weeks before the first real letter reached the home folks. They had been in Galveston for several days, but father Norton had kept them on the go so constantly they had not had time to write, and the letter, when it did come, was filled with accounts of their many trips and delightful time they were having. "Oh! mamma," wrote Ida. "Just think! I have been on board the 'Magnolia,' the very yacht on account of which Jack left home. There was some paint missing from the wheel, and Jack told me it was where he had worn it off in his effort to keep her off the point, but of course I know he was joking. He has promised me a trip in this very boat, if we get time, but I have made him agree to call the regular crew, and I mean to see that he does it too." Then after a bit she wrote: "I am just dying for one breath of burning sagebrush; everything here smells like fish or tar."
These letters from Jack and Ida always contained messages of love to Miss Anderson, who received them in quiet happiness, as if her life's work was completed when these young people were wedded.
Just a while after the Holidays Ida wrote: "By the time you receive this letter we will have started on our return trip. We leave here for New Orleans and from there we go to Chicago, and Jack has promised me one whole week or longer, if I want it, with grandpa and grandma, and Jack says he is going to bring them back with us."
When Minnie Gully received this letter she could hardly content herself, and immediately wrote to her parents notifying them of the coming of Jack and Ida, and renewed her plea for them to come.
Travis Gully was progressing nicely with the work Mr. Norton had arranged for him to have done, and the first well was almost complete when he came home from the Norton land one night and had just finished his supper, when hearing a call at the gate, he went out and was handed a package of mail by a neighbor who was returning late from the village. Going into the house, he looked over the several letters, found one for his wife from Ida, and handed it to her, saying: "See how the youngsters are."
Minnie Gully took the letter, and looking at the address, the date of mailing, and then carefully seeing if the stamp had been properly cancelled, just as most women do upon receiving a letter, opened it and read from Ida:
"We are well and happy; happy because we leave here tomorrow on the final stage of our journey home. And listen to what I am going to tell you, mother—grandpa and grandma are coming with us. This is no joke, for their baggage is at the depot and we are to stay at the hotel tonight. Jack said to please ask papa to meet us next Wednesday."