"

But as they passed the first jeweller's shop he dived in suddenly
without speaking to her. After a few minutes he emerged, his face
flushed and damp, his hand shaky.

"Look here, come up a side way somewhere, old thing! They've given me a
chunk of cardboard with little holes in it. You've got to poke your
finger in till you see which fits. Lord, I'm glad you don't get married
more than once in a lifetime."

"Don't you like it, Louis?" she asked, as she fitted her finger into the
little holes and found that she took the smallest size ring. "I do. I
think it's frightfully exciting."

"I know you do. Women love getting married. They're cock of the walk on
their wedding days, if they never are again. On her wedding day a woman
is triumphant! She's making a public exhibition of the fact that she has
achieved the aim of her life--she's landed a man!"

"Louis!" she cried indignantly, and next minute decided to think that he
was joking as they reached the jeweller's shop again. She had been
looking at the jewellery in the window: it was her first peep at a
jeweller's shop, and she thought how expensive everything was. She
noticed the price of wedding rings. When Louis came out with the ring in
a little box which he put into his pocket, he told her casually that it
cost something three times more than the prices in the window.

As they walked up the street he told her that he was tired to death,
that he had not been to bed since the _Oriana_ left Melbourne.

"I thought you stayed at an hotel that night," she said.

"No, as a matter of fact, my pet, we got run in, all of us. I don't
know, now, what we did when we found the boat had gone without us, but
we made up our minds to paint the town red. So we got landed in the
police's hands for the night and locked up."

"Oh Louis!"

"It was a great game! The funny old magistrate next morning was as
solemn as a judge. He read us a lecture about upholding the prestige of
the Motherland in a new country. Then he made us promise him faithfully
not to have another drink as long as we were in the state of Victoria.
We promised right enough, and kept it--because we knew we were leaving
Victoria in a few hours. Ole Fred was as solemn as the judge himself
about it. But when we got to Albury--that's on the borders, you know--my
hat, how we mopped it! I haven't got over it yet. But after to-day I'm
on the water-wagon, Marcella. Lord, here's the marriage shop!"

It looked like a sh