“Perhaps,” she allows at last.
It means a good deal, does that word, said in such circumstances, but I am not going to drag you through the experiences of a faithful lover, sustained by a “perhaps.” Mon Dieu! You have the privations of Dr. Nansen on his travels to read if that is the literature you admire.
No; in the words of Halfred on the eve of his nuptials with Aramatilda, “I ain't what you'd call solemn nat'rally but this here matrimonial business do make a man stop talkin' as free as he'd wish.”
I also shall stop talking, and, with the blotting-pad already in my hand, pray Heaven to grant my readers an indulgent and a not too solemn spirit.
