"How can't you, sweetheart?" He asked the question with a laugh.
"Why--why, I--I have to get a hundred and one things ready, Don," she
answered. "You can't expect a girl to marry you the day after the
engagement. I've a host of things to get ready. I haven't got a full
Hope Chest. There's linen to make up and embroider; dresses to be
made, and--and--" She paused in confusion at the mental vista of
nuptial concomitants.
"And?"
"And--and lots of things you have no business to know anything about,"
she added hastily, while an embarrassed flush crept into her cheeks.
Donald pretended not to notice, and made a careless gesture. "Oh, you
could get all those things afterwards, dear. You know, the _Amy
Anderson_ sails for Demerara next week. Don't you think a trip down
there would make an ideal honeymoon? I may not get a chance to take
you on the trip _I'm thinking of_ unless you marry me right away." It
was a carefully worded series of sentences. There was no accommodation
for a woman on the _Amy Anderson_.
Ruth thought for a moment, then, with sparkling eyes, she cried, "That
would be lovely, Donald, I'm willing, but--but--let's go home and talk
it over with mother first."
For answer he caught her around the shoulders and turned her towards
him. Looking down into her eyes, he said earnestly, "Ruthie, darling,
are you _sure_ you love me? Will you be content to marry me--a
fisherman--and be a fisherman's wife? Would you, if your mother
consented, marry me in a few days, and sail with me adown the seas on
a sailor's honeymoon? Would you?" With heart thumping wildly, he
waited for her answer, and when it came--a soft-spoken "Yes!"--he saw
her face alight with the pure flame of love and her blue eyes smiling
with adoration of him. Then he kissed her fervidly and laughed with
the joy of realization and triumph.
"So we shall, sweetheart," he cried joyously. "We shall get married
and you'll sail with me--not to Demerara--but to auld, grey Scotland.
And you'll sail as a sailor's bride, for I am of the sailor breed, but
not as a fisherman's wife, for you'll be Lady Ruth McKenzie! Aye,
sweetheart, Lady Ruth McKenzie, wife of Sir Donald McKenzie of
Dunsany, and heir to eight hundred thousand pounds!"
The sun glow flared in the golden west and the whispering spruce and
pines stirred in the evening breeze as the night-bird gave tune to his
nocturnal serenade. On the bold head-land, facing the eternal sea, two
deliriously happy souls gazed out upon the waters, and the man
murmured, "I've seen it in murmuring calms and crooning under the
stars, and I've seen it when the hail and sleet and the big graybacks
went roaring down the wind. It has been cruel and kind; it has
scourged me and inspired me; it took my father ruthlessly from me, but
it made of me a man! It has taken much, but it has given much. It
brought me to you, and I love it, as I love you, for it has given me
the greatest blessing in all the wide, wide world ... you!"