"Oh, yes, we would. I'd remember—and then trouble. I'd always feel that you and——"
"Hattie!" warned her mother. "You can't discuss that matter."
"Why not?"
"You ask that! Doesn't your good taste—your modesty—tell you that it's not proper?"
"Oh!—I mustn't discuss it. But if Wallace and I were to marry at twelve o'clock today, we could discuss it at one o'clock—and quarrel!"
"Mr. Balcome!" entreated Wallace.
Balcome deposited his cigar ashes on the sun-dial. "My boy," he said, "if a man has to dodge crockery because his wife's jealous about nothing, what'll it be like if she's got the goods on him?"
"There he goes!" triumphed Mrs. Balcome. "It's just what I expected!" And to Hattie, who was admiring the Kewpie, "Put that down!" Then to Wallace, "Oh, she gets more like her father every day! Now drop that!"—for Hattie, having let fall the Kewpie, had picked up the flaxen-haired doll. "Wallace, she never came to this decision alone!"
"Alan Farvel!" accused Wallace, hotly.
Hattie turned on him. "You—you dare to say that!"