“I—I never thought of that!” he stammered, blushing.
“Oh, Jerry,” cried the girl bursting into a fresh flood of rather easy tears, “I’m in such a fix I don’t know what to do, my Gawd, I don’t!”
“Well,” he soothed, “don’t cry any more. We’ll do that, then, Lili.” And after a little pause he added, with a note of resigned whimsy: “There won’t even be need of any license. It isn’t quite the way I always pictured myself getting married, but you can’t always have everything just the way you want it.”
Relief stole all the gloom out of eyes that were made for beaming. She ignored, or failed to sense, the finer phase of what he would be missing in the curious transaction.
“All you’ll need will be just a wedding ring, won’t it?”
“That’s all, Jerry.”
“Then I’ll buy that for you right away now, if they have any in Tahiti. I guess I’ve enough saved up. I’ll see.”
“No, no, Jerry,” she said, reviving rapidly. “That won’t be necessary. I still have my other wedding ring put away. I can use that one, and nobody will ever know any difference—will they?” And she added quite cheerfully: “It’s a lucky thing I kept it! I’d hate to have you going and spending all that money.” Her tone was almost magnanimous.
“All right,” he replied dully. “I’d sort of like to buy the ring at least, but of course it’s true no one would ever know the difference.”
He was tapping the ends of his fingers thoughtfully on the table. She wiped her eyes and smiled: “You know we may have need of all our money later on—when the time comes.”