“Hulloa, Donald, is that you?” he began. “I’ve done it.”
“Done what?” Menzies stuttered, his nerves all anyhow.
“Why, proposed to Gabrielle, of course,” O’Hara went on excitedly, “and she’s accepted me. She, the prettiest, sweetest, finest little colleen I’ve ever come across, has told me she will marry me. Ye gods, I shall go off my head with joy; go stark, staring mad, I tell you.” And crossing the floor of the study he tumbled into the chair Menzies himself had just occupied.
“I say, old fellow, why don’t you congratulate me?” he continued.
“I do congratulate you,” Menzies observed, taking another seat. “Of course I congratulate you, but are you sure she is the sort of girl you will always care about or who will always care about you. You haven’t known her very long, and most women cost a deuced lot of money, especially French ones. Don’t take the irrevocable steps before contemplating them well first.”
“I have,” O’Hara retorted, “so it’s no use sermonising. I have made up my mind to marry Gabrielle, and nothing on earth will deter me.”
“Do you know her people, or anything about them?” Menzies ventured.
O’Hara laughed.
“No,” he said, “but that doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I shouldn’t care whether her father was a navvy or a publican, or whether her mother took in washing and pinched a few odd shirts and socks now and again, only as it happens, they don’t affect the question at all, because they are both dead. Gabrielle is an orphan—quite on her own—so I am perfectly safe as far as that goes. No pompous papa to consult, no cantankerous old mother-in-law to dread. Gabrielle was educated at a convent school, and, though you may laugh, knows next to nothing of the world. She’s as innocent as a butterfly. We are to be married next month.”
Finding that it was no earthly use to say any more on the subject, just then at all events, Menzies changed the conversation and referred to the incident of the old woman.