“My wife.”
She curved to the right. He followed. To the left. He was not to be shaken off.
“Will you promise me not to say walves instead of valves, Bill?” she said, looking pretty and saucy as could be. “I know, to say W for V is fashionable in the iron business; but I don’t like it.”
“What a thing a woman is to dodge!” says Bill. “Suppose I told you that men brought up inside of boilers, hammering on the inside against twenty hammering like Wulcans on the outside, get their ears so dumfounded that they can’t tell whether they are saying valves or walves, wice or virtue,—suppose I told you that,—what would you say, Belle?”
“Perhaps I’d say that you pronounce virtue so well, and act it so sincerely, that I can’t make any objection to your other words. If you’d asked me to be your vife, Bill, I might have said I didn’t understand; but wife I do understand, and I say”—
She nodded, and tried to skate off. Bill stuck close to her side.
“Is this true, Belle?” he said, almost doubtfully.
“True as truth!”
She put out her hand. He took it, and they skated on together,—hearts beating to the rhythm of their movements. The uproar and merriment of the village came only faintly to them. It seemed as if all Nature was hushed to listen to their plighted troth, their words of love renewed, more earnest for long suppression. The beautiful ice spread before them, like their life to come, a pathway untouched by any sorrowful or weary footstep. The blue sky was cloudless. The keen air stirred the pulses like the vapor of frozen wine. The benignant mountains westward kindly surveyed the happy pair, and the sun seemed created to warm and cheer them.
“And you forgive me, Belle?” said the lover. “I feel as if I had only gone bad to make me know how much better going right is.”