Round sped the motor, and when the Martens’ appeared in sight, Annette was on the sidewalk with a covered dish in her hand and a look of excited expectancy on her face that added a hundredfold to its charms.
“Here you are—only ten cents a ride. Merry Christmas!” shouted Orville gayly, and leaned half out of the automobile to catch her. It was a daring, almost an impossible jump, yet Annette made it without accident, and, flushed and excited, sat down in front of Mr. Thornton without spilling her burden, which proved to be sweetbreads.
“Miss Badeau—Annette, I hadn’t expected it to turn out this way, but of course your aunt doesn’t care, or she wouldn’t have let you come. We’re really in no danger. This driver has had more experience dodging teams in this last hour than he’d get in an ordinary year. They tell me you’re going to Europe early to-morrow to leave all your friends. Now, I’ve something very important to say to you before you go. No, thanks, I don’t want anything more. That purée was very filling. I’ve sprained my ankle, and I need to be very quiet for a week or two, perhaps until this machine runs down, but at the end of that time would you—”
Orville hesitated, and Annette blushed sweetly. She set the sweetbreads down upon the seat beside her. Orville had never looked so handsome before to her eyes.
He hesitated. “Go on,” said she.
“Would you be willing to go to Paris on a bridal trip?”
Annette’s answer was drowned in the hurrah of the driver as the automobile, gradually slackening, came to a full stop in front of the Martens’.
But Orville read her lips, and as he handed his untouched sweetbreads to Mrs. Burton, and his sweetheart to her uncle, his face wore a seraphically happy expression; and when Mr. Marten and the driver helped him up the steps at precisely eight o’clock, Annette’s hand sought his, and it was a jolly party that sat down to a big though somewhat dried-up Rhode Island turkey.
“Marriage also is an accident,” said Mr. Burton.
The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A.