Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/153

Rh were not without their memorable moments. On Monday when they said good-night under the arc-light, a block away from the Alliance (since their relations were so soon to become a matter of secrecy, they avoided the publicity of the entrance) the sailor had said to Reba, "If you ever should feel like calling me anything—any name, I mean—not now, of course, but when it comes natural and easy, like I call you Rebecca—perhaps you'd call me what my mother used to. I'm Nat Crow at sea, you know. I'm Nathaniel Cawthorne on paper, but my mother used to call me Nathan."

"Then I will, too," Rebecca had promised.

"Thanks. Well, good-night."

"Good-night, Nathan," said Reba.

"Good-night, Rebecca," trembled the sailor.

And on Thursday night, under the same arc-light, he had lingered again. "It's all right for Saturday, he assured her. "That clergyman chap says we can come to his house and he'll do it for us, and use my Common Prayer-book. I've bought a new suit of clothes for it," he confided to Reba. "Blue serge, and," he went on eagerly, "I'm going to get you a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley at a hot-house place. That's what the clergyman fellow says is right. So you'll have things like other young ladies have them. I wanted you should. And—and—I want you to try something on," he fumbled in his breast-pocket. "I've got it here—a ring. I wanted you should have a ring, like it says in Common Prayer, even though it is going to be a secret 'solemnization of matrimony'. I've heard that most young women like a wedding-ring."