“When?”
“Oh, about two o'clock,” smiled the marquise.
“The first two o'clock?”
“Too early!”
“The second,” he said decidedly. For answer the marquise leaned from her saddle toward him and he kissed her again.
Later, by just five months and one week, the doctor mounted his horse for Happy Valley. He had to go up Pigeon, and riding by the little schoolhouse, he stopped at the door and from his horse pushed it open. The Christmas tree stood just as he had left it on Christmas Day, only, like the evergreens on the wall and over the windows, it too was brown, withered, and dry. Gently he closed the door and rode on. And on the clock-stroke of two in Happy Valley there was a wedding that blessed first June afternoon.