"You can't help it," roared her father, "if that instrument worked."
"Is--is that what it's f-for?"
"That's what it's invented for; that's why I'm putting a million into it. Anybody on earth desiring to meet the person with whom they're destined, some time or other, to fall in love, can come to us, in confidence, buy a ticket, and be hitched on to the proper psychic connection which insures speedy courtship and marriage--Damnation!"
"Pa-pah!"
"I can't help it! Any self-respecting, God-fearing father would swear! Do you think I ever expected to have my daughters mixed up with this machine? My daughters wooed, engaged and married by machinery! And you're only eighteen; do you hear me? I won't have it! I'll certainly not have it!"
"But, dear, I don't in the least intend to fall in love and marry at eighteen. And if--he--really--comes, I'll tell him very frankly that I could not think of falling in love. I'll quietly explain that the machine went off by mistake and that I am only eighteen; and that Flavilla and Drusilla and I are not to come out until next winter. That," she added innocently, "ought to hold him."
"The thing to do," said her father, gazing fixedly at her, "is to keep you in your room until you're twenty!"
"Oh, Pa-pah!"
Mr. Carr smote his florid brow.
"You'll stay in for a week, anyway!" he thundered mellifluously. "No motoring party for you! That's your punishment. You'll be safe for today, anyhow; and by evening William Destyn will be back from Boston and I'll consult him as to the safest way to keep you out of the path of this whippersnapper you have managed to wake up--evoke--stir out of space-- wherever he may be--whoever he may be--whatever he chances to call himself----"