To the surprise of the two older Martin children, the young man beamed happily upon them. “I hope it is!” he declared. Then, reaching out his strong brown hand, he placed it on the slender white one that was lying on the table near him. “If it is my aunt, then without delay I shall be able to introduce to her my future wife, Josephine Bayley.”
Children take wonderful things quite as a matter of course. Why not, since they can believe in fairies?
“Oh! Oh! I am so glad! Then we can call our dear teacher Aunt Josephine, can’t we?” eagerly asked glowing-eyed Dixie.
That night as the young couple walked up the cañon road together, Frederick Edrington for the first time told of the fortune that his father had left him.
“I am glad that I have it, for your sake,” he said to the girl at his side, “for it will enable me to give you many luxuries. Whatever things you have desired through the years, now you shall have.”
“Thank you Frederick,” the girl replied, realizing fully for the first time that her fiancé believed her to be a poor young person who had to work for a living. As they passed the inn, they could look into the brightly-lighted parlor. There they saw several people, but only one was near enough to the window to be recognized.
“It is my aunt,” the young man said, “and I suspect that Marlita Arden is with her.”
At the doorstep of the cabin they paused. The young man held out his hand. “Josephine,” he said, “will you go with me in the morning to the inn, that I may introduce to my aunt and her friends the sweetest little woman in the world, who is soon to be my wife?”
The girl-teacher could not have told why she replied, “But, Frederick, your aunt will be so disappointed because you are to marry some one who does not belong to her world, some one who is obscure and—”
Earnestly the young man interrupted: “It is for me to say what manner of maid I shall marry; but, dear, if you would rather not go,—if it will place you in an unpleasant position,—I will not ask you to accompany me. I will go alone.”