She nodded shyly and dropped to the grass and he still retained his clasp of her hand. He scanned her face. How beautiful it seemed in the rosy glow from the westering sun. “I got your letter,” he said simply. She made no reply, but sat nervously plucking at a wild flower, and her eyes were lowered to the ground.
There came into Donald’s soul at this moment the thrill of splendid hours—vistas of momentous events in his young life; reefing down jobs on the topsail yards of the Kelvinhaugh in the wild squalls of the Horn; the storming excitement of “running the easting” in the Helen Starbuck; delirious drives for port on fishermen in pelting winds and heavy seas, and all the exhilarating sensations which come to sailors every now and again. He could remember his feelings at those times—the quickening pulse, the rapid heart-beats, the alertness of eye, mind and muscle and the expectancy of ultimate conquest. He was feeling that way now. “And I’ve come to ask you again,” he said at last and with something of a tremor in his voice. Taking a full breath, he asked boldly, “Ruth! will you be my wife?”
She looked up slowly—very slowly it seemed—and her eyes looked clear and glowing into his. Then softly, very softly, she answered, “Yes!” And Donald’s arm was around her and he was pressing her to him and his kisses were upon her lips.
“And you’ll be content to marry me—a fisherman?” enquired he when the first ecstacy of love had passed. “You know what I am and what I have. Will you make the sacrifice?”
She smiled happily. “It’s no sacrifice, dear,” she replied. “I’m proud and glad to be yours, no matter what you are. It’s not the occupation that counts ... it’s the man!”
The rosy glow in the west faded and the azure of the summer night claimed the sky from nadir to zenith, while the glorious host of stellar worlds aloft spangled the heavens in myriad twinklings of diamond lights. The earth exhaled the scent of wild flowers and the warm wind wafted the odors of spruce and pine to where they sat. A night bird warbled a happy song to its mate, and its paean of love found a responsive chord in the hearts of the two who listened.
“Isn’t this just lovely, Don?” ventured Ruth. “The night, the stars, the flowers, the world, everything...!” Donald pressed her to him and looked into her upturned face, his dark eyes radiant with the joy that was his. “Not half so lovely as you, dear!”
Donald got to bed very late that night and next morning he confided his secret to his mother. “And I hope you won’t be jealous, Mater dear,” he added, “for you are still my lovely sweet mother, and Ruth will not usurp any of the love I bear for you. She’ll share it with you, and we should all be very happy.”
She flashed him a look of infinite tenderness. It didn’t seem so very long ago when he was a pale, shrinking, sensitive lad whom she comforted and petted and caressed. Here he was a lithe, strong, sun-tanned, capable man starting out on the high-road of love’s adventure. “You’ll both be my children, laddie. You’ve brought me another one, and I’ll love her for her own sake as well as yours. She’s a dear lassie, and I’m glad—oh, so glad!” Then a shade of worry crossed her face and Donald noted it.