‘Yell be getting married one of these fine days?’ his father asked, twinkling dryly at him.
‘Well, the fact is, sir,’ Paul answered in some embarrassment, ‘I am married.’
‘Holy Paul!’ said Armstrong, and dropped his pipe upon the patchwork rug. Paul stooped for it to cover his own confusion.
‘Yes,’ he said hurriedly, ‘I am married. And I felt such a beast for not having written to tell you all about it that I made up my mind to be my own messenger. The truth is it was all rather hurried, and unexpected—in a way. There had been an attachment for some time, but there was no immediate thought of marriage, and Annette—that is my wife’s name—Annette fell ill, and was not expected to recover, and it was really, to both our minds, a sort of death-bed ceremony, and now she is quite recovered.’
There was such a sense of awkwardness upon him that he boggled the simple story altogether. There was no amazement in his mind at all when his father spoke next. He could have foretold his words.
‘Man, ‘said Armstrong, ‘had ye led the gyirl astray?’
He had never meant to lie about the matter, but at this point-blank thrust he lied.
‘My dear old dad!’ he said, ‘what are you thinking of?’
‘I beg your pardon, Paul,’ said Armstrong—‘I beg your pardon.’
They seemed at once to have a gulf between them, though the simple, honest elder, who had probably never lied in the whole course of his life, did not perceive it. Before Paul it gaped unbridgable.