This, of course, brought up the version of Jake's matrimonial adventure with which he had entertained us that August noonday on the prairie, and the totally contrary version which his wife now took occasion to present. Block by block she knocked the underpinning from under Jake's carefully prepared explanation of how he had fallen from the ranks of the unwed.
"Admitted that the telegram was a forgery," said I, at length. "What about the advertisement?"
"That was the only genuine thing about it," Bella returned. "And I've been thinking seriously that Jake missed his calling; he should have been an advertisement writer. When I read that notice I said to myself, 'Here's something out of the ordinary.' . . . I was right."
We left that night with assurances from Jake and Bella that they would visit us twice a week all winter—a promise which they almost kept.
But not all our visiting was with our new neighbours. Most of it, as you may suppose, was back and forth between Fourteen and Twenty-two. Spoof we counted on to make a fifth spoke in our circle every Sunday, and the banjo lessons, neglected during our absence, were now taken up in earnest. It gave me a little orthodox shiver to think what my strict Presbyterian parents would have said to Jean picking so perverted an instrument as a banjo on a Sunday afternoon, and blending her voice with Spoof's in "The Road to Mandalay". But I was little happier when they abandoned the secular for such old airs as "Abide With Me" and "Blest be the Tie that Binds".
Toward the end of the month we had our first snowfall. Old Sol that morning had a mimic sun on either side, and there was a frosty glitter in the air in which our neighbours' shanties gradually faded out of sight as though hidden behind a veil of crystal tapestry. By noon a grey pall shrouded the sky and the snow began to shake down as gently as feathers fluttering from the bosom of some mammoth bird which had taken the world to be her nest, and in spring would hatch again the ancient miracle of life. Marjorie and I stood in our door and watched the big flakes descending, slowly, silently, resistlessly, settling on wagon and hay rack and every blade of grass. Across the gully, as through a slowly falling curtain of ivory lace, we saw the vague forms of Jack and Jean watching them, too. By mid-afternoon the ground was white.
Next morning we looked upon a new world. The snow had ceased falling, the sky was clear and bright, and the stars were still visible at our rising hour. Then up came the sun, splashing the heavens amber and orange and blood red, and suddenly setting a million tons of diamonds ablaze with his own brilliance.
After the snow came we seemed to cling to each other's company even more than before. It's a solemn thing to lie alone in a world of snow. Perhaps its coldness, its stark whiteness, its vast silence suggest that which makes the heart reach out for some warm pulse of friendship. Perhaps its peace and beauty stir something in our nature that insists on being shared.
CHAPTER XIV.
Days wore by; sometimes days of unbroken sunshine; sometimes days of gently sifted whiteness fluttering out of a grey sky. In a week all the prairie was blanketed deep with snow.