"I'm the happiest man in the world, and I want you all to know it."
Here was the kernel of the whole matter. What better could he have said? What more was there left to say? The riddle was solved, and the suspense which had hung over Westfield like a cloud for many months was dissolved in a rainbow of romance. There was no need of names; everybody understood, and a shout of delight followed. Every woman in the room shrieked her congratulations to the bride-to-be, and those nearest her got possession of her person. Miss Peggy Blake was the nearest and hence the first.
"You dear thing! It's just splendid; the most intensely exciting thing which ever happened!" she cried, throwing her arms around Lydia's neck. In the embrace her hair, which had become loose during the run, fell about her ears, and Guy Perry had to get down on his knees to find the gilt hair-pins. There was a babel of superlatives, and delirious feminine laughter; the men wrung the happy lover's hands or patted him on the back.
When the turmoil subsided Maxwell was still standing. Like St. Michael over the prostrate dragon, he had planted his feet securely for once in his life on the necks of the serpents Diffidence and Repression. He put out his hand to invite silence.
"I ask you to drink to the happiness of the loveliest woman in creation. When a man worships a woman as I do her, and she has done him the honor to plight him her troth, why shouldn't he bear witness to his love and blazon her charms and virtues to the stars? God knows I'm going to make her happy, if I can! To the happiness of my future wife, Miss Lydia Arnold!"
"All up!" cried the master, and as the company rose under the spell of love's fervid invocation, he added authoritatively, "No heel taps!"
As they drained their glasses and were in the act of sitting down, Guy Perry conveyed the cordial sentiment of all present toward the proposer of the toast and lover-elect by beginning to troll,
For he's a jolly good fellow—
For he's a jolly good fellow.