“Jus’ give me one bag of ’em an’ I guess thet will last me out.”
But Wilson insisted on the literal carrying out of their bargain, share and share alike.
The remainder of the trip was a sort of extra honeymoon for Danbury and Wilson, while Stubbs was content to act as chaperone and bask in the reflected happiness about him. The climax came with the double wedding held on board the ship in Boston Harbor just as soon as they could get a parson on board. The little cabin was a bower of flowers and what the two girls lacked in gowns (both Danbury and Wilson insisting that to prepare a trousseau was a wholly unnecessary waste of time) they made up in jewels. The dinner which followed was worthy of the Astoria, for Togo, the Japanese steward, was given carte blanche.
Stubbs was to go on to New York with Danbury, but as to where he should go from there, he was mysterious.
“There’s a widder at Lisbon–––” he hinted to Wilson.
“If you don’t find her, come back to us.”
“Maybe so; maybe so. It’s God bless ye both, anyhow, an’ perhaps we’ll meet in the end at the Home port.”
From the dark of their unlighted room in the hotel Wilson and his wife stood side by side staring down at the interminable procession of shuffling feet in which, so short a time ago, they had been two units. It had been just such a dusk time as this when she had first got a glimpse of this man by her side. The world had seemed very big and formidable to her then 347 and yet she had felt something of the tingling romance of it. Now as she gazed down through the misting rain at the glazed streets and the shadows moving through the paths of yellow lights from the windows, she felt a yearning to be a part of them once more.