“Middling,” replied Alanson. Again the music of the spinning arose. Alanson warmed his feet and hands, and felt comforted after his tramp through the vast chill woods.
When the silent companionship which he enjoyed with Wilda had quite filled its measure, he took from his pocket and unfolded a large newspaper.
“I’ll light a candle,” said Wilda, with that eagerness for romance which the simplest lives manifest.
“’Tisn’t needed,” said Alanson. What was a candle’s star to that blazing sun in the fireplace? He turned his shoulder so the light fell upon the “Saturday Evening Post,” and read a harrowing installment about some Bride of the Wilderness. There was domestic bliss in this snug cabin, the wind-song of the wheel, and the winter night with its breath of Christmas. Alanson droned on in a high key, the mother watching him as long as she was able to resist so many monotones. She went to sleep before Wilda’s stint of spinning was done, and before Alanson read with impressive voice, “To be con-tin-u-ed.”
That wary inspection of each other which people of that time called courting had varied its routine so little for twelve years betwixt this pair, that Alanson felt bound to make his usual remark as Wilda sat down to knit.
“Well, folks is still talking about us getting married, Wilda.”
“Let them talk,” said Wilda, putting her hair behind her ear, and smiling while she looked at Sweetness.
“I come here pretty regular. Don’t you think it’s about time we set the day?”
Wilda answered, without moving her eyes from the trundle-bed, “Don’t you think we better let well enough alone, Lanson?”
“Well, now, ’tisn’t well enough,” argued Alanson, and to the sylvan mind there is accumulated force in an oft-used argument. “You’ve got these woods lots and the house and a cow”—