A few minutes later, in the kitchen, when Tom was stuffing his mittens into his pockets, he felt the small package and produced it. He stepped toward the lamp on the table, holding the package extended on the palm of his hand.
“What’s this?” he said. “Where’d it come from?”
“Ye’d best open it an’ look, if ye don’t know,” suggested Gaspard, crowding against his left elbow.
And so, with Gaspard on one side of him and Catherine and Mick Otter on the other, Tom unwrapped the little package. Within the wrapper he found a cardboard box, and within that a smaller box of a different shape and material. This inner box had a hinged top that was fastened down with a catch; and when Tom undid the catch and turned back the top he gasped with astonishment at the thing he saw. Old Gaspard’s white whiskers shook with excitement and Cathie’s cheeks and eyes brightened like roses and stars. Mick Otter alone showed no sign of emotion.
“I didn’t buy this,” said Tom to the girl. “I haven’t any money, as you know, and still owe the Government some thousands on account of a stolen aëroplane. If this were mine, and all danger of my being cashiered were past—”
“True; and I’ll pay for it when my skins are sold. Show me a finger, please.”
She raised her left hand and extended to him a finger of peculiar significance.
“On the understanding that you will transfer it to another finger if I am caught and broken,” he said; and then he slid the ring into place.
“Never,” she whispered, closing her hand tight; and the little diamond flashed defiant fire from her small brown fist.
“Mick Otter have to larn ’em how to get engage’,” said the old Maliseet, in a voice of pity and mild scorn.
“Vanity! Vanity!” exclaimed old Gaspard, shaking his head slowly. “But I reckon I never see a purtier little ring,” he added.
“What’s for supper?” asked Mick Otter, in sentiment-chilling tones. “Hungry man can’t eat rings, nor vanity neither.”
They were seated at supper, and Gaspard was in the middle of a story of his vainglorious past to which only Mick Otter was paying any attention, when the latch of the front door lifted, the door opened slowly and a figure muffled in blankets stepped noiselessly into the room. Gaspard, who sat facing the door, ceased articulating suddenly and stared with open mouth. Catherine and Tom glanced over their shoulders and Mick Otter got to his feet and hurried to the visitor.