An oldish man, very fat, but healthy looking and strong, sat in an armchair near the window of the room they entered. Round the walls were barrels of porter. On the shelves were bottles of whisky. In the middle of the floor, piled one on top of the other, were three cases full of soda-water bottles.
“Andrew,” said Mary Nally, “there’s a young lady here says that you and me is going to be married.”
“I’ve been saying as much myself this five years,” said Andrew. “Ever since your mother died. And I don’t know how it is we never done it.”
“It might be,” said Mary, “because you never asked me.”
“Sure, where was the use of my asking you,” said Andrew, “when you knew as well as myself and everyone else that it was to be?”
“Anyway,” said Mary, “the young lady says we’re doing it, and, what’s more, we’re doing it to-day. What have you to say to that now, Andrew?”
Andrew chuckled in a good-humoured and tolerant way.
“What I’d say to that, Mary,” he said, “is that it would be a pity to disappoint the young lady if her heart’s set on it.”
“It’s not my heart that’s set on it,” said Miss Clarence indignantly. “I don’t care if you never get married. It’s your own hearts, both of them, that ought to be set on it.”
As a journalist of some years’ experience she had, of course, outgrown all sentiment. But she was shocked by the cool indifference of these lovers who were prepared to marry merely to oblige a stranger whom they had never seen before and were not likely to see again. But Mary Nally did not seem to feel that there was any want of proper ardour in Andrew’s way of settling the date of their wedding.