Penny watched the August moonlight glisten on her wedding ring. Just two months ago she had married Harry Bridgeman and already she felt as if she had lived a year in this little house in the West Virginian hills. The garden below the screened porch where she was sitting was fragrant with the scent of flowers she had tended during the summer. Around her and inside the house were her wedding presents, already grown dear and familiar through daily use. This evening, particularly, she was feeling a deep satisfaction in all that marriage was bringing to her. She was ready to contradict Harry’s prediction that she would find it hard to be married to a busy surgeon.

He had said, “The mill hospital will keep me on the jump every minute, Penny. You will hate the scrubby little black mill town. I’ll have to break appointments with you, skip meals, get called in the middle of the night and be unable to get home when you give parties. You’ll hate it and so will I.”

And Penny had replied steadily, “I know what marrying a doctor means, Harry. I can bear up.”