"Go right back and settle it," she urged. "Go quick, before some one else gets her. Write to her. Tell her to come right up. Send her a telegram. Seems as though I can't wait another week."
Her urgency made me laugh, even while I perceived the pathos of it. "I can't bring her to you, mother, till she is willing to come as a bride—but she's thinking about it, and I am going back next week to get my answer. Be patient a little while longer. I promise you the whole question will be settled soon, and I hope it will be settled our way. Zulime seems to like me."
Dear old mother! Her stammering, tremulous utterance made me smile and it made me weep. She was growing old prematurely, and the need of haste was urgent. "If I can possibly persuade her to come," I added very gravely, "I'll fetch her home to eat Thanksgiving dinner with you."
My tone, rather than my words, silenced her, and gave her a measure of content, although she was childishly impatient of even a day's delay.
All that week I alternately hoped and doubted, assembling all the items on the credit side of my ledger, and at last a letter came in which Zulime indicated that she wished to see me. "I am still undecided," she said, "but you may come." I left at once for the camp, feeling that her confession of indecision was in my favor.
Lorado was not markedly favorable to me as a brother-in-law. He liked me and respected me as a friend, but as a suitor for the hand of his sister—well, that was another and far more serious matter.
The camp "Equipage" met me at the station, and I consented to ride in it as far as the Heckman gate, hoping that Zulime would be there to welcome me. In this I was not disappointed, and something in her face and the firm clasp of her hand reassured me.
For nearly a week, in the midst of the most glorious October landscape, surrounded by the scarlet and gold and crimson branches of the maples and the deep-reds and bronze-greens of the oaks, she and I walked and rode and boated in almost constant companionship. Idyllic days! Days of a quality I had lost all hope of ever again reliving. Days of quiet happiness and almost perfect content, for on an afternoon of dreamlike beauty, in a glade radiant with hazy golden sunshine and odorous with the ripening leaves, she spoke the all-important words which joined her future life with mine.
We were seated at the moment on our favorite bank, under a tall oak tree, gorgeous as a sunset cloud, and as silent. I had been reading to her, and she was busy with some delicate embroidery. The crickets were chirping sleepily in the grass at our feet, and the jays calling harshly seemed warning us of the passing of summer and the coming on of frost.
"Let the wedding day be soon," I pleaded as we rose to return to camp. "I am nearing the dead-line. I am almost forty years old—I can't afford to wait. I want you to come to me now—at once. The old folks are waiting for you. They want you for Thanksgiving Day. Your presence would make them happier than any other good fortune in this world."