“Oh, I’ve saved twelve pounds this tour already.”
“Next week’s Leamington and Coventry, and the week after’s Leicester. Let’s be married in Leicester on Saturday week. That’s the only way to deal with father, and indeed it’s a kindness to the man, for he’s getting tired of playing the ill-used father, and a little bit of geniality for a change will do him all the good in the world.”
Bram caught her to him.
“You won’t regret it, Nancy?”
“Why should I regret it?”
“You shan’t, you shan’t, dear Nancy. Listen, I haven’t said anything about this before, because I didn’t want to give you the idea that I was trying to make a bargain over you. But I don’t believe in mixed marriages, and I think I’d like to be a Catholic. My grandmother’s a Catholic, you know, and she’s the only creature in the world I really care for, except you, my sweetheart.”
“Ah, now, don’t think it’s so easy to become a Catholic. You’ll have to have the devil’s own amount of instruction first. You can be married without knowing a thing at all about it. But the priest won’t baptise you so easy as he’ll marry you. Conversion can wait till we have a little more time to ourselves.”
So, on the sixteenth of June at Leicester Bram and Nancy were married. The ceremony achieved, they went for a long drive in a fly through the not very beautiful Leicestershire country and arrived back at Michael O’Finn’s lodgings about five o’clock to announce the state of affairs at the favourable hour when he should be digesting his dinner over a cigar. It was the last evening of the tour and Twelfth Night was in the bill, so that, if he should go out and get drunk before the performance, he was less likely to disgrace himself as obviously as in any of his other parts.
“Well, we’ve done it, father,” Nancy began.
“Done what?” he demanded, crackling the leaves of The Stage and scowling at Bram over the top of it.