ogether." They walked a few steps
silently.

"But how about science?" she asked him.

"I don't let myself think of it. I'll take that up later. We're young
enough, both of us, to wait for our happiness."

"And have you any idea--we might as well face the worst--how many years
do you think that will be, dearest?"

He was a little annoyed at her persistence. Also, though he would not
admit the thought, it did not seem quite the thing for her to ask. A
woman should not seek too definite a period of waiting. She ought to
trust--to just wait on general principles.

"I can face a thing better if I know just what I'm facing," said the
girl, quietly, "and I'd wait for you, if I had to, all my life. Will it
be twenty years, do you think?"

He looked relieved. "Why, no, indeed, darling. It oughtn't to be at the
outside more than five. Or six," he added, honest though reluctant.

"You see, father had no time to settle anything; there were outstanding
accounts, and the funeral expenses, and the mortgages. But the business
is good; and I can carry it; I can build it up." He shook his broad
shoulders determinedly. "I should think it might be within five,
perhaps even less. Good things happen sometimes--such as you, my heart's
delight."

They were at her gate now, and she stood a little while to say
good-night. A step inside there was a seat, walled in by evergreen,
roofed over by the wide acacia boughs. Many a long good-night had they
exchanged there, under the large, brilliant California moon. They sat
there, silent, now.

Diantha's heart was full of love for him, and pride and confidence in
him; but it was full of other feelings, too, which he could not fathom.
His trouble was clearer to her than to him; as heavy to bear. To her
mind, trained in all the minutiae of domestic economy, the Warden family
lived in careless wastefulness. That five women--for Dora was older than
she had been when she began to do housework--should require servants,
seemed to this New England-born girl mere laziness and pride. That two
voting women over twenty should prefer being supported by their brother
to supporting themselves, she condemned even more sharply. Moreover, she
felt well assured that with a different family to "support," Mr. Warden
would never have broken down so suddenly and irrecoverably. Even that
funeral--her face hardened as she thought of the conspicuous "lot," the
continual flowers, the monument (not wholly paid for yet, t