henceforth and forever.

The estate of the late Jerusha Darby, relict of the late Cornelius
Darby, no will of hers having been found, passed, by agreement under
law, to a distant relative of the late Cornelius, which relative being
Eugene Wellington, whose knowledge of the said possible conditions of
inheritance he had held in his possession for three years, since the day
he accidentally found them among the private papers of his late uncle,
knowing the while that any sudden notion of the late Jerusha might
result in putting her possessions, by her own signature, where neither
Jerry, as her favorite and heir apparent, nor himself, as heir-in-law
without a will, could inherit anything. Truly Gene had had a bothersome
time of it for three years, and he congratulated himself on having done
well--excellently well, indeed. Truly only the good little snakes ever
entered that "Eden" in the Winnowoc Valley in Pennsylvania.

XVII

THE FLESH-POTS OF THE WINNOWOC

The glory of that third springtime was on the Kansas prairies and in the
heart of a man and a maid, the best of good fellows each to the other,
who rode together far along their blossomy trails. The eyes of the man
were on the future and in his heart there was only one wish--that the
good-fellowship would soon end in the realization of his heart's desire.
The eyes of the maid were closed to the future. For her, too, there was
only one wish--that this kind of comradeship might go on unchanged
indefinitely. To Jerry no trouble seemed quite so big when Joe was with
her, and little foxes sought their holes when he came near. If the
spring work had not grown so heavy late in May, and Joe could have come
to town oftener, and one teacher had not fallen sick, and Clare Lenwell
hadn't been so stubborn, and if Stellar Bahrr had held her tongue--But
why go on with ifs? All these conditions did exist. What might have been
without them no man knoweth.

One of the humanest traits of human beings is to believe what is
pleasant to believe, and to doubt and question what would be an
undesirable fact. Jerry Swaim, clinging ever to a memory of what might
have been, building a pretty love dream, it is true, to be acted out
some far-away time by a young farmer and his neighbor in the Sage Brush
Valley, listened to Stellar Bahrr's version of Thelma Ekblad's shopping
mission, held back the tears that burned her eyeballs for a moment, and
then, being human, voted the whole thing a