Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/186

174 forgetting to open his mouth for it; and when she spoke to him, he listened, smiling vaguely, without any apparent comprehension. Several times, when she was busy with her food, she felt his eyes on her, burningly, and she did not raise her own to meet them. She had achieved a manner of perfect commonplace calm.

"Well?" he said, when they had finished. "I said I 'd be there at eight—about."

She straightened her hat, trying to look up at it through her eyebrows. "Where?"

"Father Dumphy's."

"All right." She rose, with the manner of accepting a dare, nonchalantly. "You better pay the waiter first."

He grinned. "I forgot."

And he had forgotten more than that, as she discovered when they came down the stone steps of the church, married. She was both laughing and exasperated. "You 're a peach," she said. "How 'd you think we could get married without a ring."

He shook his head, blissfully unashamed.

"It 's bad luck," she said. "Besides, that ain't a wedding ring at all." She stretched out her finger with his huge seal-ring on it.

"Well, say," he proposed, "come an' get one."

"Yes! Where 'll we get one at this time o' night?"

"I don' know."

"No. Neither do I. Put on your hat."

He put it on. They walked to the corner. He hesitated there, fumbling in his pockets.