"Or you would rather it was the twelfth?" she asked.

"I've never heard a word about this before," I said. "It all comes as a surprise to me."

"Why, I'm always asking you."

"Well, it's very forward of you, and I don't know what young people are coming to nowadays. Celia, what's the good of my talking to your cousin for three hours about motor-bicycling? Surely one can get married just as well without that?"

"One can't get married without settling the day," said Celia, coming cleverly back to the point.

Well, I suppose one can't. But somehow I had expected to be spared all this bother. I think my idea was that Celia would say to me suddenly one evening, "By the way, Ronald, don't forget we're being married to-morrow," and I should have said "Where?" And on being told the time and place, I should have turned up pretty punctually; and after my best man had told me where to stand, and the clergyman had told me what to say, and my solicitor had told me where to sign my name, we should have driven from the church a happy married couple ... and in the carriage Celia would have told me where we were spending the honeymoon.

However, it was not to be so.

"All right, the eleventh," I said. "Any particular month?"

"No," smiled Celia, "just any month. Or, if you like, every month."

"The eleventh of June," I surmised. "It is probably the one day in the year on which my Uncle Thomas cannot come. But no matter. The eleventh let it be."