“Speed it up,” urged William.
“What I am trying to say is that, after the habit of wives, she will expect you to remember each year the anniversary of your wedding day, and will be madder than a wet hen if you forget it.”
“That’s all right. I thought of that myself.”
“It is not all right,” I insisted. “Unless you take the most earnest precautions, you are absolutely certain to forget. A year from now you will come down to breakfast and Jane will say to you, ‘Do you know what day it is to-day?’ and you will answer ‘Tuesday’ and reach for the ham and eggs, thus inflicting on her gentle heart a wound from which it will not readily recover.”
“Nothing like it,” said William, with extraordinary confidence. “I’ve got a system calculated to beat the game every time. You know how fond Jane is of white violets?”
“Is she?”
“She loves ’em. The bloke Spelvin used to give her a bunch every day. That’s how I got the idea. Nothing like learning the shots from your opponent. I’ve arranged with a florist that a bunch of white violets is to be shipped to Jane every year on this day. I paid five years in advance. I am therefore, speaking in the most conservative spirit, on velvet. Even if I forget the day, the violets will be there to remind me. I’ve looked at it from every angle, and I don’t see how it can fail. Tell me frankly, is the scheme a wam or is it not?”
“A most excellent plan,” I said, relieved. And the next moment the train came in. I left the station with my mind at rest. It seemed to me that the only possible obstacle to the complete felicity of the young couple had been removed.
Jane and William returned in due season from their honeymoon, and settled down to the normal life of a healthy young couple. Each day they did their round in the morning and their two rounds in the afternoon, and after dinner they would sit hand in hand in the peaceful dusk, reminding one another of the best shots they had brought off at the various holes. Jane would describe to William how she got out of the bunker on the fifth, and William would describe to Jane the low raking wind-cheater he did on the seventh, and then for a moment they would fall into that blissful silence which only true lovers know, until William, illustrating his remarks with a walking-stick, would show Jane how he did that pin-splitter with the mashie on the sixteenth. An ideally happy union, one would have said.