“But I don’t think I ought—really. Your people, you know. And I’m sure that Granny—”
“Oh, but this is our affair. I’ve thought it all out; and if a chap wants a wife, I don’t see that anybody has a right to meddle. It’s askin’ a lot, I know—your career and all that—but I’ve enough for two, and you wouldn’t have to sing and dance to three thousand people when you were feeling so cheap you didn’t know how.”
Mary was troubled by this importunity as a girl as nice as she was bound to be. She had already grown to like this rather heavy young man. She felt capable of being a father, a mother, a brother and a sister to him, or any equally near relation whose function it would be to pull his socks up for him. But she was also a very sensible and unselfish girl, moreover, a pretty clear-sighted one; and when she said that Granny would never, she really meant what she said, and a great deal more than she did say.
All the same, she was very proud and happy as she turned up Bedford Street, with the hand of Philip still gripping her arm very tightly, although in this haven there was not a solitary Barnes and Hammersmith ’bus to warrant a continuance of such a course of behaviour.
The heir to the barony, in our humble judgment, was about the luckiest young fellow in London just then to be walking up Bedford Street with a girl as good as gold in his possession. Very nearly, but not quite in his possession. He had come at his fence so boldly; it was an inspiration to have taken off just where he did in the welter of Barnes and Hammersmith omnibuses in front of Charing Cross; his solid, manly British qualities had shone out suddenly so clear and free, that where another might have hesitated and come a purler, this sportsman had gone straight at the obstacle and very nearly come home a winner. Very nearly captured the queen of beauty, but not quite, although she was feeling very proud and happy because of the honor done to her—and it is an honor, O you young ladies of Newnham and Girton, the highest that can be paid to you, so please to remember, my dears, when you turn down your thumbs to the next undesirable—and she blushed so charmingly all the way up the street that it was a pity there were not more lamps in Long Acre by which you could have seen her.
Their feet swayed together in a delightful rhythm, in their radiant progress: spats by Grant and Cockburn, and Mr. Moykopf’s most superior hand-stitched russia leather, and eight and eleven penny Walk-easies made by the gross at Kettering, which had no spats upon ’em. Yes, it was a lovely walk in the dark amid the purlieus of Long Acre. Several times they lost their way, and didn’t try very hard to find it. And then, suddenly, from out the distant mirk, where the time-spirit was keeping its grim eye upon ’em, the hour was tolled from Saint Martin’s Church.
One—two—three—four—five—six—seven!—the excited heart of the Principal Girl counted each stroke. Cinderella must fly. She would only just have time to drink her Oxo, and to get into her rags—which were not rags at all really—and fix her war paint, if the great British public was not to receive one of the severest disappointments in its annals.
“Well, think about it, old girl—although I don’t mean to take ‘No.’ I’ve made up my mind to that.”
They were on Granny’s doorstep now. And there let us leave them without waiting to see what happened.
Did something happen?