“You shall have it. Give in and marry her at once with a good grace. That’s my advice. After all, you might do a great deal worse. She’s a very good-looking girl, and by her own account she’ll have some money. It’s far better for you to pretend you like it. It’s no earthly use your trying to escape if her mind is made up. Your plan of dodging up and down between Clonmore and Ballymoy can’t be kept up for ever. Sooner or later she’ll overtake you in one place or the other; or else she’ll meet you on the road between the two, where you’ll be quite at her mercy.”
“I dare say you’re right,” said Mr. Goddard. “But it’s not about Miss Blow that I want to consult you this morning. Did you hear about the Members of Parliament?”
“I heard that two Members of Parliament went through the town on bicycles yesterday,” said Lord Manton, “with a lot of women after them on cars; Suffragettes, I suppose, pursuing them for votes. It’s astonishing how they track those poor fellows to the remotest ends of the earth.”
“They’ve disappeared,” said Mr. Goddard.
“Sensible men. That was by far the wisest thing they could do. But I wonder how they managed it? You haven’t been able to disappear from Miss Blow. We must find out about it. I may have to disappear myself when that question comes up to the House of Lords.”
“You’ve not got it right,” said Mr. Goddard. “The women on the cars were their wives. Or rather two of them were. The other was their aunt.”
“Dear me! Is that legal? That sort of group marriage with a common aunt doesn’t seem to me quite the thing for Members of Parliament.”
“They had one wife each, of course,” said Mr. Goddard, “and the aunt only belonged to one of them. They have the police roused all over the country looking for them. That’s what brings me here this morning. I’ve got to do something to find them.”
“Do you mean to tell me that these two men have got lost in such a way that they can’t be found?”