And his prominent grey eyes seemed to be staring over my head at some imaginary plan of this entrance!
“Only, they must hurry up, mind! No more of this nonsense about their waiting a twelve-month and courting all the love away! Happy’s the wooing that’s not long a-doing: isn’t that right, Major?”
“Quite, quite!” Major Montresor got his word in edge-ways at last. “To my sorrow” (old humbug!) “be it spoken! You see, Waters, the longer you play your fish, the more likely he—that is, she—is to get away! You’ve got to put on all the strain your tackle will bear at once!”
“Hear that, Bill?” (The Governor was looking as if he would not be able to stand much more strain of this kind.) “Put it all on at once—excellent advice! And where are you going to have the wedding, Mary? Here, I daresay?”
“I had hoped so,” said Mrs. Waters, with her pretty smile at me.
“Oh, yes; here, Uncle Albert!” cried Blanche, who, I know, would regard this wedding as a dress-rehearsal of her own. And then she and Theo began to enlarge, in a kind of two-part pæon, on this function that will never be.
“A big tent on the lawn——”
“Red carpet across the gravel——”
“A huge wedding-cake just in that very place”—with a bacchanalian gesture towards the mirrored table-centre. “All the lovely presents put out in the den——”
“Too small, Blanche! I know Uncle Albert will want to give them all his furniture.”