Page:Short Stories (1912).djvu/76

Rh "swag" was a very much worn and clay-stained flock pillow.

"I'll keep the old traps as curios," he said to the third officer, who asked him why on earth he was shipping such a kit as that.

It was midsummer when he reached home and she was living up the river where he found her one glorious evening looking radiantly beautiful and happy. They would neither of them speak—their hearts were too full—and the tears started to their eyes as their hands met. At last he said:

"Chicken, I have brought home something for you—here it is." And he put his hand in his pocket and from an old worn leather case produced a faded photograph of her, round which was wrapped a draft for twelve thousand pounds.

"It helped to stuff my pillow along with the flock."

They both laughed nervously.

He held out the paper. Mechanically she took it and saw what it was, then wanted to speak but no words came. She was choking but, dimly, through the rush of her own feelings saw the tears trickle down his gaunt, bronzed cheeks. Then all got blurred and she sobbed out, her heart clasped close in his arms.

They were drifting in a punt alone on the river. In the moonlight, he had told her all his life since he had left her a year ago and she had told him all hers. He was still a young man as men go, and she in the prime of her beauty and womanhood. He had loved her for years but he had been too poor to talk of anything to her but work.

"What will you get from the "Hen and Chicken?" she asked.

They sat together on the cushions in the middle of the punt. He turned the paddle slightly with which he steered. "All told about a hundred and thirty to a hundred and fifty thousand." He turned, looked