"He urge you to marry Amos! Now Marjie, girl, I hate to be hard on the gentleman; but if he did that it's my duty to scalp him, and I will go home and do it."
But Marjie explained. We sat in the moonlight by the locust-tree just as Rachel and I had done; only now Topeka and the tree and the silvery prairie and the black-shadowed Shunganunga Creek, winding down toward the Kaw through many devious turns, all seemed a fairy land which the moonbeams touched and glorified for us two. I can never think of Topeka, even to-day, with its broad avenues and beautiful shaded parks and paved ways, its handsome homes and churches and colleges, with all these to make it a proud young city—I can never think of it and leave out that sturdy young locust, grown now to a handsome tree. And when I think of it I do not think of the beautiful black-haired Eastern girl, with her rich dress and aristocratic manner. But always that sweet-faced, brown-eyed Kansas girl is with me there. And the open prairie dipping down to the creek, and the purple tip of Burnett's Mound, make a setting for the picture.
One October day when the wooded valley of the Neosho was in its autumn glory, when the creeping vines on the gray stone bluff were aflame with the frost's rich scarlet painting, and the west prairies were all one shimmering sea of gold flecked with emerald and purple; while above all these curved the wide magnificent skies of Kansas, unclouded, fathomless, and tenderly blue; when the peace of God was in the air and his benediction of love was on all the land,—on such a day as this, the clear-toned old Presbyterian Church bell rang the wedding chimes for Marjory Whately and Philip Baronet. Loving hands had made the church a bower of autumn coloring with the dainty relief of pink and white asters against the bronze richness of the season. Bess Anderson played the wedding march, as we two came up the aisle together and met Dr. Hemingway at the chancel rail. I was in my young manhood's zenith, and I walked the earth like a king. Marjie wore my mother's wedding veil. Her white gown was soft and filmy, a fabric of her mother's own choosing, and her brown wavy hair was crowned with orange blossoms.
Springvale talked of that wedding for many a moon, for there was not a feature of the whole beautiful service, even to the very least appointment, that was not perfect in its simplicity and harmonious in its blending with everything about it.
Among the guests in the Baronet home, where everybody came to wish us happiness, was my father's friend and my own hero, Morton of the Saline Valley. Somehow I needed his presence that day. It kept me in touch with my days of greatest schooling. The quiet, forceful friend, who had taught me how to meet the realities of life like a man, put into my wedding a memory I shall always treasure. O'mie was still with us then. When his turn came to greet us he held Marjie's hand a moment while he slyly showed her a poor little bunch of faded brown blossoms which he crumpled to dust in his fingers.
"I told you I wouldn't keep them no longer'n till I caught the odor of them orange blooms. They are the little pink wreath two other fellows threw away out in the West Draw long ago. The rale evidence of my good-will to you two is locked up in Judge Baronet's safe."
We laughed, but we did not understand. Not until the Irish boy's will was read, more than half a year later, when the pink flowers were blooming again in the West Draw, did we comprehend the measure of his good-will. For by his legal last wish all his possessions, including the land, with the big cottonwood and the old stone cabin, became the property of Marjory Whately and her heirs and assigns forever.
Out there in later years we built our country home. The breezes of summer are always cool there, and from every wide window we can see the landscape the old cottonwood still watches over. Above the gateway to the winding road leading up from the West Draw is inscribed the name we gave the place,
O'MIE-HEIM.