“Hopeless, just now,” said he.
“How much money would it take?”
“Well, not so very much in comparison with the business itself,” he told her. “I own two hundred and sixty thousand dollars’ worth of stock, Trimmer owns two hundred and forty thousand, while sixty thousand more are scattered among his relatives and dependents. That stock is not for sale, that is the trouble; but if I could buy twenty-one thousand dollars of it I could do what I liked with the entire concern.”
“Then Bobby, let’s not think of anything else but how to get that stock. Let’s insist on having that for our wedding present.”
Bobby regarded her gravely for a long time.
“Agnes, you’re a brick!” he finally concluded. “You’re right, as you have always been. We’ll wait. But you don’t know, oh, you don’t know how hard that is for me!”
“It is not the easiest thing in the world for me,” she gently reminded him.
From the time that she had laid her hands in his he had held them, and now he had gathered them to him, pressing them upon his breast. Suddenly, overcome by his great longing for her, he clasped her in his arms and held her, and pressed his lips to hers. For a moment she yielded to that embrace and closed her eyes, and then she gently drew away from him.
“We mustn’t indulge in that sort of thing very much,” she reminded him, “or we’re likely to lose all our good resolutions.”
“Good resolutions,” declared Bobby, “are a nuisance.”