“Rather,” said Alan. “Boys are ridiculous, aren’t they?”
“Supposing we both laugh like that when Stella is first called Mrs. Merivale?” Michael queried.
“I shall be in much too much of a self-conscious funk to laugh at anything,” said Alan.
“And yet do you realize that we’re only talking of eight years ago? Nothing at all really. Six years less than we had already lived at the time when that wedding took place.”
To Alan upon the verge of the most important action of his life Michael’s calculation seemed very profound indeed, and they both walked on in silence, meditating upon the revelation it afforded of a fugitive mortality.
“You’ll be writing epitaphs next,” said Alan, in rather an aggrieved voice. He had evidently traversed the swift years of the future during the silence.
“At any rate,” Michael said. “You can congratulate yourself upon not having wasted time.”
“My god,” cried Alan, stopping suddenly. “I believe I’m the luckiest man alive.”
“I thought you’d found a sovereign,” said Michael. He had never heard Alan come so near to emotional expression and, knowing that a moment later Alan would be blushing at his want of reserve, he loyally covered up with a joke the confusion that must ensue.
Very few people came to the wedding, for Stella had insisted that as none of her girl friends were reputable enough to be bridesmaids, she must do without them. Mrs. Ross came, however, and she brought with her Kenneth to be a solemn and freckled and carroty page. She was very anxious that Michael should come back after the wedding to Cobble Place, but he said he would rather wait until after Christmas. Nancy came, and Michael tried to remember if he had once seriously contemplated marrying her. How well he remembered her in short skirts, and here she was a woman of thirty with a brusque jolly manner and gold pince-nez.