"And you call that a fair exchange," retorted his lady-love. "I think you're getting the best of the bargain--I'm marrying a poor man."
"Of course," said Pat cheerfully, "that's where my self-sacrifice comes in. I can't support myself, so I'm going to support you--we can live on bread-and-cheese and----
"Well?"
"If you've no objection, we'll have an acting charade on the last word."
They did!
Sir Mark was resigned to the infliction of two loving couples staying with him, but he did feel rather crushed when Gerald Foster asked him to bestow Bell's hand upon him.
"Good gracious!" ejaculated the astonished baronet, "it's a catching disease--I'm glad Mrs. Pellypop isn't here, or I'd fall a victim to matrimony myself."
He liked Foster, however, and moreover saw he was a man likely to make his mark in the world, so agreed to the engagement, and resigned himself, in a Christian spirit, to the awful fact of living in the same house with three young men engaged to the same number of young women.
"I feel like an elderly Cupid," he said plaintively; "the only remedy for this epidemic of love-making is to get them married as soon as possible."
So as soon as possible the marriages took place all at the same time in the church at Marlow, and the excitement was great over the treble event, as such a thing had not occurred in the neighbourhood within the memory of man.