"Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Lloyd!" said the fat man, pleasantly.
Martin told Cherry, when they passed him, that that was the
superintendent of the mine, and seemed pleased at the encounter.
And Cherry smiled up at the blue sky, and felt the warmth and
silence of the day saturate her whole being. Presently Martin put
his arm about her, and the bay horse dawdled along at his own
sweet will, while Martin's deep voice told his wife over and over
again how adorable and beautiful she was, and how he loved her.

Cherry listened happily, and for a little while the old sense of
pride and achievement came back--she was married, she was wearing
a plain gold ring! But after a few days that feeling vanished
forever, and instead it began to seem strange to her that she had
ever been anything else than Martin's wife. The other women at the
mine were married; she was married; and nobody seemed to think the
thing remarkable in them, or in her. She was, to be sure, younger
and prettier than any of the others, but the men she met here were
not the sort whose admiration would have satisfied her innocent
ambition to have Martin's friends flock about her adoringly, and
more than that, they knew her to be newly married, and left the
young Lloyds to their presumably desired isolation. And very soon
Cherry found herself a little housewife among other housewives,
much more praised if she made a good shortcake than because the
tilt of her new hat was becoming.

For several days she and Martin laughed incessantly, and praised
each other incessantly, while they experimented with cooking, and
ate delicious gipsy meals. In these days Martin was always late at
the mine, and every evening he came home to find that ducks, or a