“But I asked you to marry me now—before I go—next week—will you?”
And Patsy sighing happily said, “Yes, Ralph; I don’t think I could bear it unless I were your wife.”
They went out arm in arm to break the great news, and were not a little amazed to see how much as a matter of course the elder people took it.
“It’s time you two sillies settled it, I think,” said Mother McCullon, tears and smiles disputing for her eyes.
“I suppose,” said Father McCullon, mischievously, “we may call this the first victory of the war, Ralph. You would never have got her if you hadn’t changed your tune.”
But Patsy and Ralph, looking at each other wisely, knew better. The war—why, what had the war to do with their love? Already the world-old conviction of true lovers submerged all history. Since time began they were destined for one another, and neither war nor pestilence could have kept them apart.
As Ralph demanded, so it was. Four days later there was a wedding at the farm—a wedding so simple that Mother McCullon was shocked. Both Ralph and Patsy would have it so. “We have no time for fussing, Mother,” the autocratic young man had declared, and Patsy was as little concerned. She was going with him. She would find a home as near his camp as practical. She would stay there as long as practical. To make this possible without too great inconvenience to those with whom she worked in school and town, seemed vastly more important than a wedding. Were not these war times?
But a sweeter wedding never was, so Dick and Nancy and Mary and Tom Sabins and the half dozen other friends invited said. Everybody was so happy, everybody so proud, everybody so sure.
“It isn’t often that I marry two people,” so Dick said to Nancy as they drove back from the station where they said good-by to the pair, “without some inward doubts. I haven’t a shadow about Patsy and Ralph. They will work it out.”
And Nancy said confidently, “I am sure of it.”