“I’ll tell you what, Jeremy, I’ll go away and leave you to make the running. Not that I see that there is much good in either of us making the running, for we have nothing to marry on, and no more has she.”
“And we are only twenty-one. We can’t marry at twenty-one,” put in Jeremy, “or we should have a large family by the time we’re thirty. Fellows who marry at twenty-one always do.”
“She’s twenty-one; she told me so.”
“She told me too,” said Jeremy, determined to show that Ernest was not the only person favoured with this exciting fact.
“Well, shall I clear? we can’t jaw about it for ever.”
“No,” said Jeremy, slowly, and in a way that showed that it cost him an effort to say it, “that would not be fair; besides, I expect that the mischief is done; everybody gets fond of you, old fellow, men or women. No, you sha’n’t go, and we won’t get to loggerheads over it either. I’ll tell you what we will do—we will toss up.”
This struck Ernest as a brilliant suggestion.
“Right you are,” he said, at once producing a shilling; “singles or threes?”
“Singles, of course; it’s sooner over.”
Ernest poised the coin on his thumb.