prefer office work to this constant changing. Marriage is a great
change, anyway. Everything is different; your point of view, your
very personality changes with it. You'll be lonely, my dear.
You'll miss your sister and Anne, and all the old friends. There
are cases where it must be so, of course. But in your case--"

He stopped, discouraged. She was sitting opposite him at the
shabby writing table, her elbows resting upon it, her full lips
pouting with disappointment. Perhaps the one phrase of her new
plans that pleased Cherry most was that she was to be carried
entirely away from the familiar atmosphere in which she would
always be "little Cherry," and subject to suggestions and
criticisms. Now she began slowly to shake her head.

"Can't take your old father's word for it?" Doctor Strickland
asked.

"It isn't that, Dad!" she protested eagerly and affectionately.
"I'll wait--I have waited! I'll wait until Christmas, or April, if
you say so! But it won't make any difference, nothing will. I love
him and he loves me, and we always will.

"You don't know," Cherry went on, with suddenly watering eyes,
"you don't KNOW what this summer of separation has meant to us
both! If we must wait longer, why, we will of course, but it will
mean that I'll never have a happy instant! It will mean that I am
just living along somehow--oh, I won't cry!" she interrupted,
smiling with wet lashes, "I'll try to bear it decently! But
sometimes I feel as if I COULDN'T bear it--"