“Blood is blood. He will never descend quite to the level of the men of one generation. I’ve just thought of another yarn.”
“Oh, do tell it! Let us walk.”
They wandered about for an hour or two, pushing through the low forest of fronds and young redwoods, sometimes silent and happy, sometimes planning out the days of their honeymoon, sometimes absorbed in the vast silence, the almost overwhelming suggestion of immensity and power and antiquity of the redwoods.
“They are a thousand years old—some of them.”
“They are so new to me that I can hardly realise their age. But they make the rest of the world seem a thousand miles away, and there is something about them that agitates soul and sense, and promises—almost everything. If Trennahan won’t lend us his house, we’ll come here and camp out.”
They went down to the flashing creek whose walls were brilliant with green and scarlet, and counted the fish, Cecil hungrily sighing for a rod.
“I’ll let you fish during the honeymoon—you remember, I promised—but only one hour in the morning and another in the afternoon.”
“I see you are determined to make a good wife without sacrificing your precious individuality. But, my dear, we must go.”
As they descended the mountain out of the redwoods, Cecil looked back with a sigh. “If we had only seen something,” he said. “I have talked so much sport to-day that I’m all on fire again for my grizzly.”