Desert Conquest Part 62

"Fact. Doctor Swift told me. 'G.o.d bless pa, and ma, and Mister Jim Hess, and Miss Burnaby.' That's the formula. Swift predicts that the next batch of christenings will include a 'Yim Hess' Swanson and a 'Clyde Burnaby' Brule. Such is fame! Think you can stand the dizzy popularity?"

"Lovely!" cried Clyde. "I'll order silver mugs to-morrow, and start a savings account for each baby."

"Go slow!" he laughed. "You'll have 'em all named after you at that rate."

"I'll get the mugs and a spoon, anyway. I never was so flattered before. I've just begun to _live_ since I came out here. Why, Casey, my life was absolutely empty. You can't imagine how lonely and bored I was."

"What a shame! We'll see that it doesn't occur again. Which opens an interesting question: When are you going to marry me?"

"Why--I hadn't thought. I suppose we should think of it."

"Well, it's usual, under the circ.u.mstances."

"Next June? I think I should like to be a June bride."

"See here, young lady," said Casey severely, "what sort of a gold brick is this? Are you aware that we are in the f.a.g end of July?"

"It's really not a long engagement. A year soon pa.s.ses."

"And the years soon pa.s.s. I'm not going to be defrauded of a year's happiness. I'll stand for any time in September, but not a day later."

"September! But, my dearest boy, that's only a few weeks."

"That's why I said September."

She laughed happily. "Very well, September. But I'll have a thousand things to do. I'll have to go back with Uncle Jim."

"What's the use? Stay here. Kitty Wade will stay, too. I'll coax her."

"But I've all sorts of things to buy?"

"Order 'em by mail."

"My trousseau _by mail_!" she exclaimed, in horror. "It would be sacrilege."

"Oh, well, suit yourself," said Casey, with a sigh of resignation.

"Thank the Lord it only happens once."

She laughed. "And then there's our honeymoon to plan. Where shall we spend it?"

"It's up to you. Wherever you say."

"You've never been to Europe?"

"No. But I'd rather do my honeymooning where I can ask for what I want with some chance of getting it."

"But I speak French, German, and Italian--not fluently, but well enough to get along on."

"And I talk United States, Chinook, and some Cree--we ought to get along almost anywhere," he laughed. "Let's leave this Europe business open. Now here's a really serious question: When our honeymoon is over--what?"

"I don't understand."

"Where shall we live? I can sell out here, if you like."

"But you wouldn't like?"

"I'd hate to," he admitted.

"I know. So should I. We'll live here, at Chakchak. It shall be our home."

"Would you be contented? It's lonely at times. The winters are long.

You'd miss your friends and your old life."

"I ran away from both. I love your country because it's yours. It shall be mine, too. Look!" Away in the distance a tiny point of light twinkled. "There are the lights of Chakchak--our home lights, dear!"

Her hand sought his in the darkness, met, and clasped it. A star shot in a blazing trail across the velvet blackness of the sky. The first breath of the night breeze, cold from the mountain pa.s.ses, brushed their cheeks. Save for the distant light the world was dark, the land lonely, silent, devoid of life. The great s.p.a.ces enfolded them, wrapped them in silence as in a vast robe. But the old, sweet song was in their hearts as they rode slowly forward--to the Light!

MYRTLE REED'S NOVELS

LAVENDER AND OLD LACE.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

A charming story of a quaint corner of New England where bygone romance finds a modern parallel. The story centers round the coming of love to the young people on the staff of a newspaper--and it is one of the prettiest, sweetest and quaintest of old fas.h.i.+oned love stories, * * *

a rare book, exquisite in spirit and conception, full of delicate fancy, of tenderness, of delightful humor and spontaneity.

A SPINNER IN THE SUN.

Miss Myrtle Reed may always be depended upon to write a story in which poetry, charm, tenderness and humor are combined into a clever and entertaining book. Her characters are delightful and she always displays a quaint humor of expression and a quiet feeling of pathos which give a touch of active realism to all her writings. In "A Spinner in the Sun" she tells an old-fas.h.i.+oned love story, of a veiled lady who lives in solitude and whose features her neighbors have never seen.

There is a mystery at the heart of the book that throws over it the glamour of romance.

THE MASTER'S VIOLIN.

A love story in a musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso is the reverent possessor of a genuine "Cremona." He consents to take for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an apt.i.tude for technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth has led the happy, careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American and he cannot, with his meagre past, express the love, the pa.s.sion and the tragedies of life and all its happy phases as can the master who has lived life in all its fulness. But a girl comes into his life--a beautiful bit of human driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home, and through his pa.s.sionate love for her, he learns the lessons that life has to give--and his soul awakes.

Founded on a fact that all artists realize.

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