"You're getting tired." Manley put his arm around her and held her there.

"We're over half-way now. A little longer and we'll be home." Then he
bethought him that she might want some preparation for that home-coming.
"You mustn't expect much, little wife. It's a bachelor's house, so far.
You'll have to do some fixing before it will suit you. You don't look
forward to anything like Fern Hill, do you?"

Val laughed, and bent solicitously over the suitcase, which her feet had
marred. "Of course I don't. Nothing out here is like Fern Hill. I know our
ranch is different from anything I ever knew--but I know just how it will
be, and how everything will look."

"Oh! Do you?" Manley looked at her a bit anxiously.

"For three years," Val reminded him, "you have been describing things
to me. You told me what it was like when you first took the place. You
described everything, from Cold Spring Coulee to the house you built, and
the spring under the rock wall, and even the meadow lark's nest you found
in the weeds. Of _course_ I know."

"It's going to seem pretty rough, at first," he observed rather
apologetically.

"Yes--but I shall not mind that. I want it to be rough. I'm tired to death
of the smug smoothness of my life so far. Oh, if you only knew how I have
hated Fern Hill, these last three years, especially since I graduated. Just
the same petty little lives lived in the same petty little way, day in and
day out. Every Sunday the class in Sunday school, and the bells ringing