"I am not interested in Mr. Finch,—which is, I believe, his correct name."
"Pinch, I thought."
"Finch! And what does his name matter, anyway?"
"Well," said Sigsbee, "it matters this much, that Molly seems to want to make it hers. What I'm driving at, if you see what I mean, is that Molly came in a moment ago and told me that she and this young fellow Finch have just gone and got engaged to be married!"
2
Having uttered these words, Sigsbee Horatio stood gazing at his wife with something of the spell-bound horror of a man who has bored a hole in a dam and sees the water trickling through and knows that it is too late to stop it. He had had a sort of idea all along that the news might affect her rather powerfully, and his guess was coming true. Nothing could make a woman of Mrs. Waddington's physique "leap from her chair": but she had begun to rise slowly like a balloon half-filled with gas: and her face had become so contorted and her eyes so bulging that any competent medical man of sporting tastes would have laid seven to four on a fit of apoplexy in the next few minutes.
But by some miracle this disaster—if you could call it that—did not occur. For quite a considerable time the sufferer had trouble with her vocal chords and could emit nothing but guttural croaks. Then, mastering herself with a strong effort, she spoke.
"What did you say?"
"You heard," said Sigsbee H. sullenly, twisting his fingers and wishing that he was out in Utah, rustling cattle.
Mrs. Waddington moistened her lips.