“And if the gal is afeared that I’m playing possum on her, I’ll marry her, by gum, and naow I have said it.”

After a few minutes the terms of this new proposal were communicated to Katrina, in her own tongue. At first she cried and hid her face, but as the interpreter continued and embellished the matter more or less, she let her apron drop and began to look timidly at the suitor for her hand. When the story was fully told, she accepted the offer with a great deal less hesitation than I had expected, and walked over to the side of the Puritan descendant. He took her by the hand, and observed to us, as they proposed to depart:

“Mother’s ben talkin’ marriage to me nigh on ten year, but I sez, sez I, you wimmin are sich infernal talkers, and I’ve kinder hild off. This one’s talk won’t worry me much, I calerlate, but what will mother say when I come a plowin’ in with her? Howsumever, I’ve allus told the old lady that when I move I fly, and b’gosh she’ll larn that lesson, when she sees us, I raelly do bleeve, though she never has yit. We’ll be married inside an hour—private-like—by Mayor Wickum. No keerds.”

Katrina had fallen to crying again as he was delivering this speech, but he didn’t notice it until he had finished. It was then that he drew her apron from her pretty face with a touch as soft and persuasive as a woman’s, pushed her fair locks back gently, and said so tenderly that she knew instinctively the spirit, if not the substance of it:

“Poor, poor, pretty dear; we’ll go home now, and I know mother’ll set a heap by you.”

And as the great steamers bore grandly past and went down the Narrows, and ferry-boats went dashing here and there in all directions, while stately ships spread their white wings and sailed away, and the sullen roar of business and bustle came borne upon the breeze—all unmindful of these or of the birds singing on the boughs above them, this queerly mated pair passed silently hand-in-hand through the Battery Park to the ceremony which should join their hopes and fortunes forevermore.