Sisters | Page 5

how royal a proceeding
it seemed to Lily to be, the setting apart of a Government vessel solely
and entirely to convey her to her new abode, as if she were a little
queen going to her husband's kingdom. She could not help holding
herself with dignity, if not with a trifle of vaingloriousness, as, between
half-a-dozen eager hands and admiring eyes, she stepped down into it.
"Now, have you got everything?" the landlady called from the pier.
"Oh, everything--everything in the world!" Guthrie shouted, in reply.
"Where's your waterproof, Lily?" screeched the step-mother. "Better
put it on, my dear; and I'd advise you to sit under cover, both of you.

You'll be drenched if you don't, in this wind. Why, Mr Hardacre, it's
blowing a perfect gale!"
"A bit fresh, ma'am," Bill admitted; "just enough to keep us lively. All
aboard, Mr Casey? Pass the word, sir, when you're ready."
"Ready!" called Guthrie. And then he said something to the men, Bill
Hardacre and his mate Dugald Finlayson, about having everything on
board--all his life and happiness, or something to that effect--at which
they laughed and chaffed him as the launch backed from the pier, and
started off in the tearing hurry characteristic of Customs boats.
Lily was in the cabin with the baby and the landlady's cousin, who had
'got round' Mr Hardacre to give her a return passage, after seeing the
little family safe home. Husband and wife had frowned at the
suggestion of having her with them on the launch, but when they had
shut her in out of sight and hearing, and found themselves free to
follow their own devices untrammelled by their child, they did not
mind so much.
"Hadn't you better--?" Guthrie began, when his wife reappeared,
clinging to the door-jamb; but she exclaimed again:
"No, no! Let me be outside with you!" She wanted to feel "at sea" with
him, to bathe herself, under the shelter of his protection, in the
magnificent, tempestuous, inspiring night. To her, cooped up all her life
in streets and prosaic circumstances, there was something in the present
situation too poetical for words. No bride who had married money, and
was setting out by P. & O. upon her luxurious European tour, could
have been more keenly sensible of the romance of foreign travel than
she, crossing Hobson's Bay in a borrowed Customs launch; while the
squally darkness surrounding and isolating her and her mate
immeasurably enhanced the charm. "I want to see it--to feel it!" she
pleaded. "The air is so clean and fresh! The sea is so grand tonight!
How beautiful it smells! Guthrie, I must have been born for a sailor's
wife--I love it so!"
"Of course you were," the sailor assented heartily. "No manner of

doubt about that. Well, sit here, if you prefer it, sweetheart"--on the
stern grating--"only mind you don't catch cold. And don't let us get that
pretty frock spoiled before the Williamstown folks have seen it."
He steadied her while she stood to have the big macintosh drawn
closely about her--the round cape, flapping far and wide in the rough
wind, was like an unmanageable sail, he said--and when she was again
seated, he tucked it about her knees and feet. Buttons being hard to find
and fasten, he pulled the two fronts of the garment one over the other
across her lap, and she sat upon the outer one. Then he readjusted the
white fascinator, winding the fluffy ends round her neck, and finally
encircling all with his stalwart arm. There she sat, resting against him,
her left hand in his left hand, her contented eyes shining like stars in the
dark. They were practically alone in space, their deck companions
having thoughtfully turned their backs and made themselves as remote
as possible.
A long sigh fluttered through Lily's parted lips from her surcharged
heart. Guthrie heard it through all the clamour of the gale--for it really
was a gale--and the noise of the screw and fiercely snorting funnel. He
stopped his face to hers.
"Tired, pet?"
"No," she murmured, "oh, no!"
"What, then?"
"Only happy--PERFECTLY happy."
"Same here," he said, careless how he tempted Fate--"only more so."
Their lips met, and were holding that sweetest kiss of lovers that are
man and wife, when a wave, driven by the wind, flung a shower of
spray at them, giving each a playful slap of the face as a hint not to be
too confident.
"Hadn't you better get inside?" he urged, as he wiped her cheek.

"It'll be rougher still directly." "Oh, no, it's splendid! The rougher the
better. I'm so glad it's rough. I can't take any harm, so well wrapped up,
and with you, my husband."
"Ah, Lil!" The hug he gave her in acknowledgment of the word made