and the silhouettes of the people gathered around
it.

In a week they were surreptitiously holding hands.
In two weeks they could scarcely endure the part-
ings when Bud must start back to San Jose, and
were taxing their ingenuity to invent new reasons
why Marie must go along. In three weeks they were
married, and Marie's mother--a shrewd, shrewish
widow -- was trying to decide whether she should
wash her hands of Marie, or whether it might be
well to accept the situation and hope that Bud would
prove himself a rising young man.

But that was a year in the past. Bud had cabin
fever now and did not know what ailed him, though
the cause might have been summed up in two meaty
phrases: too much idleness, and too much mother-in-
law. Also, not enough comfort and not enough love.

In the kitchen of the little green cottage on North
Sixth Street where Bud had built the home nest
with much nearly-Mission furniture and a piano,
Bud was frying his own hotcakes for his ten o'clock
breakfast, and was scowling over the task. He did

-7-