“If I marry you,” cried Carter, frightened but also greatly excited, “your mother won’t give you a penny!”
“And that,” taunted Dolly, perfectly aware that she was ridiculous, “is why you won’t marry me!”
For an instant, long enough to make her blush with shame and happiness, Carter grinned at her. “Now, just for that,” he said, “I won’t kiss you, and I WILL marry you!” But, as a matter of fact, he DID kiss her. Then he gazed happily around his small sitting-room. “Make yourself at home here,” he directed, “while I pack my bag.”
“I MEAN to make myself very much at home here,” said Dolly joyfully, “for the rest of my life.”
From the recesses of the flat Carter called: “The rent’s paid only till September. After that we live in a hall bedroom and cook on a gas-stove. And that’s no idle jest, either.”
Fearing the publicity of the City Hall license bureau, they released the clergyman, much to the relief of that gentleman, and told the chauffeur to drive across the State line into Connecticut.
“It’s the last time we can borrow your mother’s car,” said Carter, “and we’d better make it go as far as we can.”
It was one of those days in May. Blue was the sky and sunshine was in the air, and in the park little girls from the tenements, in white, were playing they were queens. Dolly wanted to kidnap two of them for bridesmaids. In Harlem they stopped at a jeweler’s shop, and Carter got out and bought a wedding-ring.
In the Bronx were dogwood blossoms and leaves of tender green and beds of tulips, and along the Boston Post Road, on their right, the Sound flashed in the sunlight; and on their left, gardens, lawns, and orchards ran with the road, and the apple trees were masses of pink and white.
Whenever a car approached from the rear, Carter pretended it was Mrs. Ingram coming to prevent the elopement, and Dolly clung to him. When the car had passed, she forgot to stop clinging to him.