Page:War; or, What happens when one loves one's enemy, John Luther Long, 1913.djvu/280

WAR enough to die—and go away from daddy and Jon and Dave—or even be sick enough to be kept away from them a little while?"

"No!" says both my boys again.

"Then come here, both of you, all three of you! I want to tell you something."

We all sat as close to her on the bed as we could, and she sort of got her arms around all of us.

"Don't you know that a girl's wedding day—a girl who marries the one man in the world she can marry—is the maddest, darlingest, craziest day in all her life? Oh, it's a wonder they don't all go mad—die—before it arrives—as—as—I have done! She is a miser—gloating, not over sordid coins, but gossamer clothing! She is a pirate—begging, buying, stealing the most beautiful gems in the world to adorn herself—for him! She is a priestess, a nun, a devotee, praying, praying always for his and her and their happiness! She is already a wife—knowing, understanding, what it is to be bone of another's bone, 264