After a bit, though, we didn't say much of any thing. I was just lookin' at Sadie. And say, I've seen her when I thought she looked mighty nice, but I'd never got just that view of her before, with the moon kind of touchin' up her red hair, and her cheeks and neck lookin' like white satin.
She has a way, too, of starin' off at nothin' at all, sometimes, and then there's a look in her eyes, and a little twist to her mouth corners, that just sets me tinglin' all over with the wantin' to put me arm around her and tell her that no matter who else goes back on her, there'll always be Shorty McCabe to fall back on. It wa'n't anything new or sudden for me. I'd felt like that many a time, and as far back as when her mother ran a prune dispensary next door to my house, and she an' I used to sit on the front steps after supper. She'd have spells of starin' that way then, 'choppin' off a laugh in the middle to do it, and maybe finishin' up with a giggle. I guess that's only the Irish in her, but it always caught me.
She must have been lookin' that way then, for the first thing I knows I'd reached out and pulled her up close. She never kicks, but just snuggles her head down on my shoulder, with them blue eyes turned so I could look way down into 'em. At that I draws a deep breath.
"Sadie," says I, husky like, "you're the best ever!"
She only smiles, kind of sober, but kind of contented, too.
"And if I had the nerve," says I, "I'd ask you to be Mrs. Shorty McCabe."
"It's too bad you've lost your nerve so sudden," says she.
"Wha-a-at!" says I. "Will you, Sadie; will you?"
"Silly!" says she. "Of course I will."
"Bless the saints!" says I. "When?"