t forced? Did you force me to do that? No,"
she said; "you needn't think you're the only person in the world that
wants another person.... If you go to Australia I don't wait here. I go
too. If you sink by the way, I sink. And don't you go to thinking you've
made me a one-sided bargain.... I can cook for you and mend for you and
save for you. And if you're sick I can nurse you. And I can black your
boots."

"I thought," said I, "that you were just a little girl that I wanted,
but you turn out to be the whole world that I've got to have. Slip the
rest of your canvas on and I'll hook it up for you. Then we'll find some
one to marry us--'nless you'd rather wait."

"Wait?" said she, turning her back and standing still, which most women
haven't sense enough to do when a man's ten thumbs are trying to hook
them up. "I've been waiting all my life for this--and you!"

"And I," said I, splitting a thumb-nail, "would go through an eternity
of hell if I knew that this was at the end of it--and you!"

"What is your church?" she asked of a sudden.

"Same as yours," I said, "which is----"

"Does it matter," said she, "if God is in it? Do you pray?"

"No," said I; "do you?"

"Always," she said, "before I go to bed."

"Then I will," said I; "always--before we do."

"Sometimes," she said, "I've been shaken about God. Was to-night--before
you came. But He's made good--hasn't He?"

"He has," I said. "And now you're hooked up. And I wish it was to do all
over again. I loved doing it."

"Did you?" said she.

Her eyes were bright and brave like two stars. She slipped her hand
through my arm and we marched out of the opera-house. Half a dozen young
globe-trotters were at the stage-door waiting to take a chance on Miss
Green as she came out, but none of them spoke. We headed for the nearest
city directory and looked up a minister.

II

I had married April; she cried when she thought she wasn't good enough
for me; she smiled like the sun when I swore she was.

I had married June; she was like an armful of roses.

We weren't two; we were one. What alloy does gold make mixed with brass?
We were that alloy. I was the brass.

We travelled down to Singapore first-class, with one-armed Yir Massir to
look after us--down the old Hoogli with the stubs of half-burned Hindus
bobbing alongside, crows sitting on 'em and tearing off strips. We ran
aground on all the regular old sand-bars that are never twice in the
same place; and on