Shoe-Bar Stratton Part 40

"You don't quite look it," he commented. "I reckon it'll take some time to get rid of those--those shadows and hollows and all."

He was looking down at her with that same tender, whimsical smile that quirked the corners of his mouth unevenly, and the expression in his eyes set Mary's heart to fluttering. She could not bear it, somehow! To give him up was even harder than she had expected, and suddenly her lids drooped defensively to hide the bright glitter that smarted in her eyes.

Suddenly he broke the brief silence. "When are you going to marry me, dear?" he asked quietly.

Her lids flew up and she stared at him through a blurring haze of tears.

"Oh!" she cried unsteadily. "I can't! I--can't. You--you don't know how I feel. It's all too--dreadful! It doesn't seem as if I could ever--look you in the face again."

Swiftly his arms slid about her, and she was drawn gently but irresistibly to him.

"Don't try just now, dear, if you'd rather not," he murmured, smiling down into her tear-streaked face. "You'll have a long time to get used to it, you know."

Instinctively she tried to struggle. Then all at once a wave of incredible happiness swept over her. Abruptly nothing seemed to matter--nothing on earth save this one thing. With a little sigh like that of a tired child, her arm stole up about his neck, her head fell gently back against his shoulder.

"Oh!" Mary said abruptly, struck by a sudden recollection. It was an hour later, and they sat together on the sofa. "I had a letter from Stella to-day." A faintly mischievous light sparkled in her eyes. "She sent her love--to you."

Buck flushed a little under his tan. "Some little kidder, isn't she, on short acquaintance?" he commented.

"Short!" Mary's eyes widened. "Why, she knew you before I did!"

"Maybe so, but I didn't know her."

Buck had rather dreaded the moment when he would have to tell her of that beastly, vanished year, but somehow he did not find it hard.

"As long as you don't ever let it happen again, I sha'n't mind," she smiled, when he had finished. "I simply couldn't bear it, though, if you should lose your memory--now."

"No danger," he a.s.sured her, with a look that deepened the color in her radiant face.

For a moment she did not speak. Then all at once her smile faded and she turned quickly to him.

"The--the ranch, dear," she said abruptly. "There's something, isn't there, I should do about--about turning it over--to you?"

He drew her head down against his shoulder. "No use bothering about that now," he shrugged. "We're going to be made one so soon that-- How about riding to Perilla to-morrow and--"

"Oh, Buck!" she protested. "I--I couldn't."

His arm tightened about her. "Well, say the day after," he suggested. "I'm afraid we'll have to spend our honeymoon right here getting things to rights, so you won't have to get a lot of new clothes and all that.

There's nothing unlucky about Thursday, is there?"

She hid her face against his coat. "No-o; but I don't see how--I can--so soon. Well, maybe--perhaps--"

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