"Forgive me, Ted," she said, clinging tightly to me, "but it hurts a little to go, even with you." I kissed her wet eyes and said nothing. "I love you, Ted. I love you," and she sobbed in my arms.
We ate our luncheon in the clearing by the wood. It was too hot for a camp fire, and, as the sandwiches had melted, Leonidas de la Patte Jaune ate more than we did. Helen was back in her usual mood of high content. Her laugh, at some clumsy antic of Leonidas or some word of mine, rang again and again through the solitude of our hiding place. The coming of dusk and the mosquitoes drove us out at last.
"Another whole day of perfect happiness, Ted," she confided, leaning across to me from her saddle.
Only Mrs. Claybourne was displeased; we were late for dinner.
And then the great day came. I had thrown one last defiance in Miss Hershey's teeth by selecting Knowlton to be my best man. In spite of the grin he grinned when I asked him, I saw that secretly he was pleased—perhaps a little moved. He came round to my rooms early in the morning to lend me aid and comfort, although the wedding was not to be until two o'clock.
"Keep a stiff upper lip, Ted," was his greeting, as he unpacked a breakfast of sorts from various pockets. He would not hear of my going out for breakfast. "Shall I make some coffee?" he asked, as he took my alcohol lamp apart. "Here's a cantaloupe, just off the ice," and he banged a melon down on the table. "Got a knife?"
I sat up in my pyjamas and surveyed his preparations.
"I'm not an invalid, Knowlton," I protested, as he tried to make a slice of toast over a gas jet. "I don't know what you conceive the functions of a best man to be, but I did not ask for cooking to be included in the specifications. In fact, I'm not certain that even Shaefer's wouldn't manage breakfast better."
"Go to hell, Ted. I learned to cook before you were born," was his rejoinder.