Page:Fidelia, (IA fidelia00balm).pdf/205

 fair to him." Aloud he said: "You broke with him, you mean."

"No. Not exactly. We both did it, David. He went away; that's how it was. Then he died."

David was sure that she had sent him away; he was glad that her break with Sam Bolton had happened before Bolton's death and had been of her doing.

David asked: "Do you want to tell me, were you ever engaged to anybody else?"

"I wasn't David," she told him and it was a satisfying assurance which prevented him from asking more.

Fidelia wrote her letter to Mr. Jessop by the campfire that evening; she finished hers quickly; but David wrestled long with his letter to his father. He destroyed many drafts before he composed a simple statement of the fact that he had married a girl, named Fidelia Netley, who had no family, who had come to college at mid-year and who was the girl with whom he had been carried out on the ice. He added the date and place of the wedding and stated that he purposely had kept his father in ignorance of his plan.

They tramped through the woods to the rail road and mailed their letters in the morning; and they returned to their camp, singing. They moved camp on the next day, not from any discontent with the spot they had first chosen but because David required occupation.

Fidelia liked to exert herself in the packing of the camp kit; she liked the paddling of the loaded canoe and the clearing of the camp site; she liked to expend