He stopped to blow his nose. Bellows also blew his, but for a different reason.
"Yes, I sneezed. The exhibition ceased. I had just time to shut the closet door before De Foe came into the room, looking about. He said something about 'confounded servants,' and then went back to her. Then I heard him call her 'sweetheart' and ask her if she wouldn't tie his necktie for him, like a little darling. By Gad, sir, it was worse than I thought. I—"
Bosworth coughed violently, and Miss Downing found it necessary to fleck some dust from a bronze bit at her elbow—somewhat to the rear of it, to be perfectly accurate.
"You don't understand, father—" began Buzzy, nervously.
"Confound it sir, I'm not deaf. I'll pass over the next half hour, except to say that they billed and cooed without cessation. I give you my word, that closet was like an ice-chest. I demmed near froze to death. At last they went away. Bellows came back with my trousers and shoes. After he'd gone, I stole out and got into 'em. There's a lot more I could tell, but—what's the use? I want to get out of here. Just to think that I came up here in all this storm to ask that creature to be my wife! 'Gad, I wouldn't ask her now if she was the last woman on earth. Open the door for me, Bellows! I'm going next door to the Lackaday, for the night, Bosworth. Call up by 'phone in the morning to see if I have pneumonia."
He stormed into the hall without saying good night to Miss Downing. They heard him swear roundly as Bellows opened the door to the vestibule. Then there was a slam of the outer door. Together the young man and woman walked to the front window, and, side by side, they saw him fight his way down the steps and across the thirty feet of snowbank that lay between the house and the street entrance to the hotel bar.
Mr. Van Pycke did not know, until he saw it in the papers next day, that there had been a wedding. It may be well to add in this connection that it was a long time before New York heard the last of that wedding and its amazing guests by proxy.
"Good night," said Miss Downing, as they turned away from the window.
"Oh, please, not yet," he cried.
"I am so tired," she pleaded.