out
when you've done your level best."
"Carol, it is fine, labor is, it is life. I can't imagine an existence
without it. Going to bed, worn out with the day, rising in the morning
ready to plunge in over one's ears. It is the only real life there is.
How do people endure a drifting through the days, with never anything
to do and never worn enough to sleep?"
"I don't know," said Carol promptly. "They aren't alive, that's sure.
But let's go to bed. David, please get off that floor and stop
coughing."
David obediently got up, lightly dusting his trousers as he did so.
Then he lifted his arms high and breathed deeply. "Anyhow it is better
to be tired than lazy, isn't it?"
CHAPTER VIII
REACTION
"Will you have this woman?"
David's clear, low voice sounded over the little church, and the bride
lifted confident, trusting eyes to his face. The people in the pews
leaned forward. They had glanced approvingly at the slender, dark-eyed
girl in her bridal white, but now every eye was centered on the
minister. The hand in which he held the Book was white, blue veined,
the fingers long and thin. His eyes were nervously bright, with faint
circles beneath them.
David looked sick.
So the glowing, sweet faced bride was neglected and the groom received
scant attention. The minister cleared his throat slightly, and the
service went smoothly on to the end.
But the sigh of relief that went up at its conclusion betokened not so
much satisfaction that another young couple were setting forth on the
troubled, tempting waters of matrimony, as that David had finished
another service and all might yet be well.
Carol, half way back in the church, had heard not one word of the
service.
"David is an angel, but I do wish he were a little less heavenly," she
thought passionately. "He--makes me nervous."
The carriage was at the door to take the minister and his wife to the
Daniels home for the bridal reception, but David said, "Tell him to
take us to the manse first, Carol. I've got to rest a minute. I'm
tired to-night."
In the living-room of the manse he carefully removed the handsome black
coat in which he had been graduated from the Seminary in Chicago, and
in which a little later he had been ordained for the ministry and
installed in his church in the Heights. Still later he had worn it at
his marriage. David hung it over the back of a chair, saying as he did
so:
"Wearing pretty well, isn't
|