“They cannot have each other if the claim fails. They will have to starve to death in each other’s arms like the ‘Babes in the Wood’; I am sure the robins will come and cover them with leaves.”
“But the big uncle,” her father asked.
“Poor fellow,” Mrs. Meredith said. “Judge Rutherford is finest when he enlarges on him. He says, over and over again, as if it were a kind of argument, ‘Tom, now—Tom, he wants those two young ones to be happy. He says nature fixed it all for them, so that they could be happy—and he doesn’t want to see it spoiled. He says love ain’t treated fair, as a rule, and he wants to see it given a show—a real show.’”
At least one pair of deeply interested listener’s eyes were fixed upon her. They were the Reverend John Baird’s.
“It might be a beautiful thing to see,” he said. “One does not see it. There seems a fate against it. The wrong people meet, or the right ones do not until it is too late.”
“I should like to see it myself,” said the host, “but I am afraid that the argument—as an argument—would not support a claim on the Government.”
“I am going to see the claimants and hear all the arguments they can bring forward,” was Mrs. Meredith’s conclusion. “I want to see Romeo and Juliet together.”
“May I go with you?” asked Baird.
Latimer had not come in when he returned to their lodgings. He also had been out to spend the evening. But it was not many minutes before Baird heard his latch-key and the opening of the front door. He came upstairs rather slowly.
“You are either ill,” Baird said, when he entered, “or you have met with some shock.”