"I have an idea—an inspiration!"
"Yes, pet," rather dubiously from him, but with absolute exultation from her: "Let's wreck the train!"
"I don't follow you, sweetheart."
"Don't you see?" she began excitedly. "When there are train wrecks a lot of people get killed, and things. A minister always turns up to administer the last something or other—well——"
"Well?"
"Well, stupid, don't you see? We wreck a train, a minister comes, we nab him, he marries us, and—there we are! Everything's lovely!"
He gave her one of those looks with which a man usually greets what a woman calls an inspiration. He did not honor her invention with analysis. He simply put forward an objection to it, and, man-like, chose the most hateful of all objections:
"It's a lovely idea, but the wreck would delay us for hours and hours, and I'd miss my transport——"
"Harry Mallory, if you mention that odious transport to me again, I know I'll have hydrophobia. I'm going home."
"But, darling," he pleaded, "you can't desert me now, and leave me to go on alone?" She had her answer glib: