It simply had to come off, and she begged him to understand and be an angel and take it off himself.
He drew it away at last. But he did not like the omen. She put it on a ribbon and he knotted it about her neck. Then she remembered that she wore a dinner gown in the play, and it had to come off the ribbon. She would have to carry it in her pocketbook.
The omens were hopelessly awry.
CHAPTER XXXIV
The brand-new couple forgot problems of this and every other sort in the raptures and supernal contentments of belonging to each other utterly and forever.
The notifying of their parents was one of the unpleasantest of tasks. They put it off till the next day. Sheila’s father and mother had already begun their tour to the Coast and the news found them in the Middle West.
Sheila telegraphed to them:
Hope my good news wont seem bad news to you Bret and I were quietly married yesterday please keep it secret both terribly terribly happy play opens Grand Rapids Monday best love from us both to you both.
Her good news was sad enough for them. It filled them with forebodings. That phrase “terribly happy” seemed uncannily appropriate. Between the acts of their comedy that night they clung to each other and wept, moaning: “Poor child! The poor child!”
Winfield’s situation was summed up in a telegram to his home.