“Marie Zattiany,” she answered, with a smile.
“Legitimate or ill—” he paused in midflight, dipped his forefinger into the catsup and dreamily drew a red cross on his shirt-front.
“Pardon me,” he continued, “I was about to ask a personal question. To speak quite impersonally—will you marry me?—if you’re of marriageable age.”
“How old do you think I am? Don’t answer. You’d certainly either flatter me nauseatingly or insult me grossly. Come back in three weeks and I will tell you my story.”
She raised her hand for him to kiss, but he ducked and she missed him by an inch.
Outside the house, he remembered the shattered basement-windows. His southern chivalry would not let him leave her unprotected. He lay down on the doorstep and slept soundly until dawn.
V
A column a day keeps the sheriff away and when you’ve got the habit, you keep right on, no matter what your feelings are—or your readers’. It helped L. C. to bear incertitude with fortitude.
The make-up seldom varied. It must open with a poem, preferably an authentic L. C. Horatian ode. His odometer registered three a week. It was his line—“master of the Horatian line,” he had been called. As thus: