“Hush, child! You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Yes, I do—perfectly. And you wouldn’t like that. So you see what my position is. It’s absolutely necessary to my future happiness that we should be quietly married some morning—to-morrow, if you like, but certainly in a day or two—and that nobody should know anything about it, until I’ve told uncle Robert.”
“After all,” said Ralston, hesitating, “it will be very much the same thing as though we were to run away, provided we face everybody at once.”
“Very much better, because there’ll be no scandal—and no immediate starvation, which is something worth considering.”
“It won’t really be a secret marriage, except for the mere ceremony, then. That looks different, somehow.”
“Of course. You don’t suppose that I thought of taking so much trouble and doing such a queer thing just for the sake of knowing all to myself that I was married, do you? Besides, secrets are always idiotic things. Somebody always lets them out before one is ready. And it’s not as though there were any good reason in the world why we should not be married, except the money question. We’re of age—and suited to each other—and all that.”
“Naturally!” And Ralston laughed again.
“Well, then—it seems to me that it’s all perfectly clear. It amounts to telling everybody the day after, instead of the day before the wedding. Do you see?”
“I suppose I ought to go on protesting, but you do make it very clear that there’s nothing underhand about it, except the mere ceremony. And as you say, we have a perfect right to be married if we please.”
“And we do please—don’t we?”