“That’s a good idea,” exclaimed Donald eagerly. “I’ve almost forgotten how to walk after two months on shipboard.” The skipper, clean-shaven, and looking bronzed and handsome in his shore clothes, murmured approval and stood awkwardly to one side as the girls passed out. Donald and Helena went on to the gallery, and Ruth turned to her brother. “Go on, now, you big calf,” she said quickly. “Go and take Helena. Don’t be hanging back like a country bumpkin.”
Judson grinned sheepishly. “Haow do I know she wants to go with me? Maybe she prefers Donald.”
His sister made an impatient gesture. “Don’t you like Helena?” she snapped.
The skipper, reddening under his tan, stood irresolute. “Sure I do,” he replied, “but I don’t want to force my company on her!”
“‘Faint heart never won fair lady,’” quoted Ruth sharply. “Go and ask her to walk with you, and when you talk with her, try and say something interesting!” And she pushed him out on the gallery towards the others. Feeling considerably more nervous than he ever felt during a strenuous watch at sea, Judson took the easier course and addressed Donald. “Will you walk with Ruth, Don? She’s tired of me an’ I’m afraid of her! She’s got an awful tongue!” Donald was only too pleased to make the exchange, and they sauntered down the road towards the headland.
It was a most entrancing night—a night of dark azure sky brilliant with moonlight and myriad stars—and the waters of the bay glittered like silver in the glow from the moon. The warm southerly wind was perfumed with the scent of budding and flowering herbage and the balmy, resinous odors of spruce and balsam. The frogs in the field ponds were crooning their nightly lullabys, and their continuous croaks served as an orchestral accompaniment to the sweet warbling of the robins and other songsters of the twilight hours. Somewhere in a spruce thicket a whip-poor-will was calling, and over on the rocks of the passage, the gulls sounded weird cries, as if in plaintive greeting to a coasting schooner standing out to sea with the ebb tide. She sailed across the moon-path on the water, and for a moment her hull and sails stood up in silhouette against the silvery background, then she slipped out of the glare and faded into the darkness, with but the red glow of her port light to mark her presence.
“Isn’t this lovely?” exclaimed Ruth softly, as they sat down in a hollow of the Cape and looked over the harbor and passage. “This is a favorite spot of mine, and I love to come here in summer and look at the sea.”
Donald sat on the grass beside her with his arms around his knees. The spring air was inoculating him with its exhilaration, and a strange sensation of pleasant enjoyment of life was taking possession of him. He breathed deep of the warm-scented breeze, and stared at his partner’s pretty features illuminated by the moon-glare. Her face was turned away from him, and her profile, crowned with a luxuriance of dark tresses, looked almost Madonna-like in the silvery glow, and Donald was thinking how delightful it would be to slip his arms around those rounded shoulders and, holding her closely to him, kiss her upon that rosy mouth. “In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love!” Donald recalled the famous phrase and sighed. Ruth turned. “What are you thinking of, Mr. McKenzie?” she asked, smiling. For a moment he could not answer, but the “Mr. McKenzie” jarred him. It did not fit in with the night, and he replied boldly, “I was thinking how much nicer it would be—for me, at least—if you would not be so formal. I would like you to call me Don, instead of ‘Mister McKenzie,’ and I would also like to call you Ruth. Ruth is such a pretty name, and should not be masked under the conventional ‘Miss’.” He paused and looked at her with wide dark eyes faintly smiling.
The girl bent her head and picked at the grass. “If you would like me to call you ‘Don,’ I certainly will—Don,” she said with a flash of her eyes.
He gave a little laugh. “And I hope you will permit me to call you ‘Ruth’—Ruth!” With this primary barrier to intimate acquaintanceship broken down, they sat and talked as only young men and women of “sweet seventeen” know how, and they voiced the thoughts which came to mind inspired by the beauty of the night, but Donald dare not give expression to all the ambitions and desires inspired in him by the charming young woman at his side. She was very lovable, he thought, and he knew that his boyish heart was already captivated by her fresh young beauty and the glory of her clear and deep blue eyes. He always adored blue eyes, and Ruth’s reminded him of the sea and sky in the track of the Trades—the fine weather, azure when the sun would be shining, and the flying-fish leaping from the murmuring wave-crests of the tropical sea—the deep, unfathomed blue.