"Will you please go right to your room, dear? I want to say something to
you--alone."

When she went up the stair, Peggy caught a signal from her husband. Aldous
remained with them. In two minutes he told the bewildered and finally
delighted Peggy what was going to happen, and as Blackton hustled out for
the minister's house he followed Joanne. She had fastened her door behind
her. He knocked. Slowly she opened it.

"John----"

"I have told them, dear," he whispered happily. "They understand. And,
Joanne, Paul Blackton will be back in ten minutes--with the minister. Are
you glad?"

She had opened the door wide, and he was heading out his arms to her again.
For a moment she did not move, but stood there trembling a little, and
deeper and sweeter grew the colour in her face, and tenderer the look in
her eyes.

"I must brush my hair," she answered, as though she could think of no other
words. "I--I must dress."

Laughing joyously, he went to her and gathered the soft masses of her hair
in his hands, and piled it up in a glorious disarray about her face and
head, holding it there, and still laughing into her eyes.

"Joanne, you are mine!"

"Unless I have been dreaming--I am, John Aldous!"

"Forever and forever."

"Yes, forever--and ever."

"And because I want the whole world to know, we are going to be married by
a minister."

She was silent.

"And as my wife to be," he went on, his voice trembling with his happiness,
"you must obey me!"

"I think that I shall, John."

"Then you will not brush your hair, and you will not change your dress, and
you will not wash the dust from your face and that sweet little beauty-spot
from the tip of your nose," he commanded, and now he drew her head close to
him, so that he whispered, half in her hair: "Joanne, my darling, I want
you _wholly_ as you came to me there, when we thought we were going to die.
It was there you promised to become my wife, and I want you as you were
then--when the minister comes."

"John, I think I hear some one coming up the front steps!"

They listened. The door opened. They heard voices--Blackton's voice,
Peggy's voice, and another voice--a man's voice.

Blackton's voice came up to them very distinctly.

"Mighty lucky, Peggy," he said. "Caught Mr. Wollaver just as he was passing
the house. Where's----"

"Sh-h-hh!" came Peggy Blackton's sibilant whisper.

Joanne's hands had crept to John's face.

"I think," she said, "that it is