I took the electric car out to the factory to report to Knowlton.
"Claybourne is rather pessimistic," I began.
"He would be," said Knowlton. "He doesn't want to make himself personally responsible for your campaign. If he were first in, it would commit him to us as a venture which he was backing. Almost too bad you are to be his son-in-law. It ties his hands."
I said nothing about Mr. Claybourne's real objections.
Mr. Claybourne left early after dinner, as was his custom, to play bridge at the club. Mrs. Claybourne knitted in the front room, and Helen and I had thus our evening to ourselves. Leonidas curled up on a goatskin rug and snored while we alternately talked and read. Spring was coming on, although April, with its cold winds off the lake, was not very spring-like. But the approach of spring made us look forward more definitely to a possible date for our marriage. So far I had not been able to gain my father's permission either to return to England or to set an actual date for the wedding. He hoped that it could be arranged by mid-summer. Beyond that, he refused to commit himself. Helen thought June, as the most conventional time, would probably please her mother best. Already Mrs. Claybourne was threatening to go to the coast of Maine at the end of June and carry Helen with her. We knew that nothing but a definite date could forestall this plan. We figured that we could almost live upon my salary, but there were practical difficulties in the way of taking temporary quarters, if we were going to England soon afterwards. We were therefore a little reluctant to defy matters and get married at once. At least, so Helen's commonsense concluded. We could not afford to quarrel with either family, and a matter of a few extra weeks seemed hardly worth general displeasure. I agreed with Helen, chiefly because it never occurred to me to disagree with her. We were each so sure of the other's love that we did not pass through those agonies of suspense, petty jealousies, and quarrels that seem to be, according to novels, the stock-in-trade of lovers' conduct. We were simply, insanely, and also calmly happy. We lived in our own world, allowed no one across its threshold, and never dreamed of stepping outside it ourselves. Leonidas alone was privileged to share our bliss.
As we sat and talked in whispers of the days to come, the telephone bell rang. It was a cable from my father, and, like mine, in code. The girl at the other end spelled it out to me while Helen wrote it down. At last we had it all, and it was a fairly long one. I walked into the hall to get my copy of the code book, and discovered that I had left it at the telegraph office. Helen scolded me soundly, for our evening was spoiled. It meant that I had to go back down town after the book, and it would then be too late to return. There was nothing for it but to go.
The girl at the office was quite sorry for me. She had found and kept my book.
"You might have sent it out by messenger," I said reproachfully.
"I thought of it, Mr. Jevons," she said, "but I didn't know if you would want it that bad. A messenger costs thirty cents."