Philena, beloved grandchild of Betsey Pilrig, Young, beautiful and good, God numbered her among His angels At the early age of fifteen!
“Now promise,” Dan insisted, holding her hands.
“I promise,” Thurley answered. Leaning over the cross, they kissed each other with tender solemnity.
“Shall we sit here and talk,” Thurley asked, “or walk back?”
“Anything you like. You’re so beautiful to-day, Thurley, I wonder if you realize how beautiful you are! I’m going to make you wear the proper sort of clothes and send right off for your ring.”
Thurley glanced at her pink cotton blouse and white wash skirt in disdain. “I hate bothering over clothes and yet I’d like rich, weird creations just dropped from the skies. I never could sit and sew like—”
“Lorraine, I suppose!” Dan laughed in spite of himself. “I want to walk over to the _Gazette_ office and put our engagement notice in. I wouldn’t want that to go by another week, if I had to get out an extry. I believe I’d make them get out an extry, too!”
“Did the _Gazette_ ever get out an extry for anything?” she asked.
“The nearest they ever came to it was when Ali Baba was learning to ride a wheel and he ran into a barrel of tar pitch within half an hour of four o’clock! Come on, sweetheart, we can begin planning furniture.”
Thurley lingered near an old tombstone with the engraving:
Naked as from the earth we came, And crept to life at first, We to the earth return again, And mingle with our dust.
“I love a graveyard,” she said pensively. “I like to sing in one.”
“Sing for me now.” Dan was anxious to comply with her slightest wish.
“This is a queer one to sing, up here,” she answered, beginning,
The ship goes sailing down the bay, Good-by, my lover good-by—
Dan was not thinking of the song; he was thinking of Thurley as his bespoken wife and of his and Thurley’s life together. Singing was to be a minor thing which should take place while babies were rocked to sleep or perhaps on Easter Sunday for the special anthem. Dan had no idea of allowing her to remain a paid soloist—but it would do to tell her so later!
“Bravo,” he said as she finished. “Shall we go along?” tucking her arm under his with a masterful air.
They trudged down the pathway to the road. Some children were picking the last berries from the dusty bushes; when they caught sight of Thurley, they ran towards her, saying,