“It was her love or somebody’s life!
“He demanded to marry Lil right off.
“But her brother opposed such precipitate measures; urged that both parties were much too young to dream of marriage, Joe being eighteen, and Lil but sixteen. Why, he said that he, himself, Joseph Wyvil, his elder by six years, did not yet contemplate matrimony. Besides, he could, in any case, give his sister a comfortable home yet for many years, or even for her whole life, while Joe had no home to take her to, and had still his own way to make in the world.
“In answer to all this, Joe, with the modest assurance—or shall we say consummate impudence?—of his nature, proposed that he should immediately marry Lil and that they should continue to live on at the cottage until he should have to go to sea again, when he would leave his wife as heretofore in her old home under the protection of her brother.
“Naturally enough, Mr. Wyvil did not see the excellence of this arrangement in quite so strong and vivid a light as did Joe and even Lil.
“After laughing a little at the ingenuous proposal, he reverted to his first argument, that both were too young, foolish and impecunious to be married—adding that a boy of eighteen and a girl of sixteen, who talked of such a proceeding, should be locked up for a calendar month on a depleting diet of bread and water.
“Whereupon the Spanish lad eagerly declared that as for himself he would most joyfully submit to the terms, bread, water, imprisonment and everything else that might be required to purchase the indulgence, if only Joseph would be so good as to lock him and his sweetheart up in the same room.
“For all answer to that suggestion, Mr. Wyvil informed the ardent lover that he was a lunatic and should be sent to a mad-house.
“Opposition only added fuel to the flame of Joe’s passion. Mr. Wyvil did not understand the difference between the dark blood and the bright when he contemptuously characterized that passion as puppy love.
“Mr. Wyvil went off to his work. He was finishing the interior of a church at that time. Joe raved and Lil cried. And then they took their fate into their own hands. They resolved to run away and get married! Or rather to sneak away.