"I don' know whether she'll make me a good wife or not," he confided in me, "but I reckon she's set on makin' me a good husband."

But Bella's house was clean, and Bella's table was well set, as pioneer tables go, and Bella was a living concentration of energy such as Jake needed to spur him into purposeful activity. It was Jake's weakness that he would drop a job any day to perpetrate a joke.

"He thinks he's a joker," said Bella, acidly, anent this characteristic of her husband, "whereas he's only a joke. There's a big difference."

"I admit the joke's on me," Jake returned meekly. "I should never ha'

showed that telegram."

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 advertis.e.m.e.nt?"

"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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 a.s.surances 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 gra.s.s. 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.

Then came the great night.

At this time of the year, in this lat.i.tude, it is dark by five in the afternoon, particularly if the sky happen to be overcast. On the day in question Jack and I had done up our few ch.o.r.es about the stable, carried in a supply of water and firewood, and returned to our shacks for supper. Marjorie, brisk, efficient housewife that she was, had the table set when I came in. Our meals were perforce simple, and when we had finished and the few dishes were cleared away I looked at my watch. It was barely six o'clock.

"This is going to be another of our long, long evenings," Marjorie remarked, with what seemed like a suggestion of complaining. "Suppose you ask Jack and Jean to come over; I don't feel like going out in the snow."

"Jean may not feel like going out either," I retorted. "I guess she's as much like sugar as you are," I added, having in my mind some reference to an adage about sugar melting.

"I fancy you think she's a good deal more like sugar than I am, brother o' mine," Marjorie returned. "Well, run along and find out."

Later, when I recalled that remark, I was struck with its significance, but at the moment I had no suspicion that Jack and Marjorie were working a scheme on me. I have always held that Jean was innocent of any part in it.

So urged, I pulled on my pea-jacket and overshoes and fur cap and started out on the hundred-yard jaunt from our shack to the one across the gully. As I came out of the door the snow was falling thickly but in smaller flakes than usual; the air seemed filled with a mist of snow, and there was a rising wind, but the temperature was not uncomfortable.

I could see the dull yellow glow of the light in Jean's window across the gully and a thing that struck me at the moment was that nothing about that glow offered any clue to the distance at which it was located. Had I not known I might have believed it a mile away, or within a dozen yards.

I made the trip without difficulty and entered without knocking as was our custom in our numerous visits back and forth. Jean looked up from the table where she sat reading.

"Alone, Frank?" she said, when I had closed the door behind me.

"Yes; where's Jack? I came to see----"

"Jack left for Fourteen some time ago. He was going to ask you and Marjorie to come over. You must have pa.s.sed him."

"That's rather funny. That's what _I_ came for, if you reverse it.

Strange I didn't see him on the way."

"He may have looked in at the stable again, to make sure that the stock are all right," Jean suggested. "He said it looked like rough weather."

I stood for a moment, undecided whether I should go back for Jack and Marjorie, or ask Jean to go with me. It was she who settled the question.

"Take off your things, Frank," she invited. "Jack will be there by this time, and will keep Marjorie company. It is not a good night for a girl to go walking."

So I stayed, although a little self-consciously. Jean and I had known each other's company since childhood, but, at least since coming to the West, we had hardly seen each other alone. Always Jack or Marjorie, or both, were somewhere about. There had been, of course, that sudden, impetuous, unspoken revelation when we returned from our harvest absence in the settlements, but there had been no talk of love between Jean and me. I had treasured that moment as a bit of wonderful memory, as a glimpse of wonderful promise, but I had not presumed upon it; I had concluded that two months' loneliness had been too much for Jean's reserve, and that she had done something it hardly would be fair to talk about. . . . Doubtless Jack, when he found I had missed him, would be back shortly.

I took my wraps off and sat down beside the stove. The warmth was very pleasant after the buffeting of the snow, and Jean looked very lovely and tempting in the soft glow of the lamp on the table. I felt a strange embarra.s.sment growing upon me as the moments were ticked off by the little alarm clock on the shelf. The embarra.s.sment grew until I felt that I must break it by speech of some kind.

"What are you reading?" I ventured at last.

"Nothing."

"Nothing! You have a book----"

"I know, but I'm not reading it."

"Then what _are_ you doing?"

"Just waiting."

"Waiting? For what?"

Then she looked up at me, and there was a light in her eyes that was strange and good to see, but it sent my brain reeling. For a moment she looked at me thus, and started my heart thump-thumping like a steam pump. Then her eyes drooped.

"Don't you know, Frank?" she murmured.

Her face was ruddy in the glow of the lamp, and the pink skin shone with a color that was not all reflected. Amazing as was her revelation I could no longer fail to understand it. I rose and walked to the table; I took her hands in mine and lifted her to her feet.

"You are waiting for me to--kiss you, Jean," I whispered.

She was trembling, but she spoke with outward composure. "There is something else, first."

"Something else--first? I don't understand."

"You should."

I could not follow her thought. "I kissed you once before," I ventured.