“Short!” Mary’s eyes widened. “Why, she knew you before I did!”
“Maybe so, but I didn’t know her.”
Buck had rather dreaded the moment when he would have to tell her of that beastly, vanished year, but somehow he did not find it hard.
“As long as you don’t ever let it happen again, I sha’n’t mind,” she smiled, when he had finished. “I simply couldn’t bear it, though, if you should lose your memory—now.”
“No danger,” he assured her, with a look that deepened the color in her radiant face. 354
For a moment she did not speak. Then all at once her smile faded and she turned quickly to him.
“The—the ranch, dear,” she said abruptly. “There’s something, isn’t there, I should do about—about turning it over—to you?”
He drew her head down against his shoulder. “No use bothering about that now,” he shrugged. “We’re going to be made one so soon that— How about riding to Perilla to-morrow and—”
“Oh, Buck!” she protested. “I—I couldn’t.”
His arm tightened about her. “Well, say the day after,” he suggested. “I’m afraid we’ll have to spend our honeymoon right here getting things to rights, so you won’t have to get a lot of new clothes and all that. There’s nothing unlucky about Thursday, is there?”