She understood my way of putting the argument. She knew that I was veiling my own eagerness under my mother's need, and after a little reflection she said, "I am going out to my father's home in Kansas. You may come for me there on the twenty-third of November. That is—if you still want me at that time."
The end of the camp season was at hand; everybody was packing up, and so my girl and I turned with deep regret from the golden halls of our sylvan meeting-place. "This is my Indian summer," I said to her, "and that you may never have cause to regret the decision which this day has brought to you, is my earnest hope."
More than twenty years have gone over our heads, and as I write these lines our silver wedding is not far off. Our lives have not been all sunshine, but Zulime has met all storms with a brave sweetness, which I cannot overpraise. If she has regrets, she does not permit me to know them. My poverty—which persists—has not embittered her or caused her, so far as I know, a single mood of self-commiseration.
CHAPTER NINE
A Judicial Wedding
On reaching my Elm Street home the next day, I was surprised and deeply gratified to find on my desk a letter from William Dean Howells, in which he said: "I am at the Palmer House. I hope you will come to see me soon, for I start for Kansas on a lecture trip in a few days."
Although I had long been urging that he should come to Chicago, he had steadfastly declined to accept a lecture engagement west of Ohio, and I could not quite understand what had led him so far afield as Kansas. I hastened to call upon him, and, at the first appropriate pause in the conversation, I spoke to him of my engagement. "Miss Taft loves your books and would keenly appreciate the honor of meeting you."
With instant perception of my wish to have him know my future wife, he replied, "My dear fellow, I am eager to meet her. Perhaps my gray hairs will excuse your bringing her to call upon me."