Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/159

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A NEW KIND OF WEDDING
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had been, his lips were not so blue. A flush of red had surged to his face and he looked very much as any lean, self-respecting, well-dressed man of Scottish origin and American birth and training might be expected to appear. From force of habit, as he straightened from his bow, Jamie extended his hand and recognized the touch of the hand that met his, and then he lined up shoulder to shoulder and said casually: “We figured time from the same watch, didn’t we?”

The girl beside him merely assented. Jamie took charge of proceedings with all the self-assurance of a man who was accustomed to captaining his own affairs. Whatever the woman beside him was getting out of this, Jamie had made up his mind that he was going to get a wedding, and it was going to be his own. He took the arm of the girl beside him and piloted her to the Clerk’s desk. Whether she had the correct impression now or not, Jamie did not know, but he proposed that when she got through with that wedding and went her way with the ring and the certificate that were to save her self-respect, she should, at least, go in the belief that she had married a man. He had forgotten all about telling her that very shortly he would not be a man; he intended for the few minutes that were to come to be all man.

So he impelled her to the Clerk and announced that they wanted to fill the forms necessary to procure a marriage license. While Jamie wrote down the names of his father and mother and the date of his birth and his residence and his occupation and all the things required, beside him