He kissed her lightly.
"That's the natural result of being found out. I've felt it myself.
Are you going?"
"You know that I cannot."
"You shall have twenty minutes to choose. At the end of that time I shall pass out at the gate and look up at your window. If the blind remain up, I go to the vicarage to put up our banns before I set off for Plymouth. If it be drawn down, I leave this house for ever, taking nothing from it but a suit of old clothes, a few worthless specimens (that I shall turn out of my pockets by the first hedge), and the memory of your face."
It happened, as he unlatched the gate, twenty minutes later, that the blind remained up. Ruby's face was not at the window, but he kissed his hand for all that, and smiled, and went his way singing. The air was the very same he had whistled dumbly that morning, the air that Ruby had speculated upon. And the words were—
"'Soldier, soldier, will you marry me,
With the bagginet, fife and drum?'
'Oh, no, pretty miss, I cannot marry you,
For I've got no coat to put on.'
"So away she ran to the tailor's shop,
As fast as she could run,
And she bought him a coat of the very very best,
And the soldier clapped it on.
"'Soldier, soldier, will you marry me—'"
His voice died away down the lane.