"Stuff! They don't give you penal servitude for marrying wards in Chancery. It's contempt of court."
"Yes, I know. Have to wash out your cell at Holloway, and stand at 'attention,' with your hat off, while the governor cuts you dead."
"Then perhaps you will be so good as to tell me what it is that you do propose to do. Do you imagine that you are the sort of person the court of Chancery will ever allow to marry me?"
"Haven't so much imagination, my dear Frank."
"Call me Fanny, not Frank! You are not to call me Frank. Then do you suppose that I'm the sort of girl who's willing to wait, and not marry her sweetheart, until she's twenty-five? Because if you suppose anything of that kind, we must be perfect strangers."
"It's very good of you, I'm sure."
"Oh, I daresay. You don't love me that much." Miss Cullen flicked her parasol. "Because a horrid old uncle chooses to say that I'm to be a ward of the court until I'm five and twenty, am I to be a spinster all my life? If you loved me the least little bit, you'd invite the Lord Chancellor to come and see you marry me in the middle of Hyde Park, even if, directly the deed was done, he had your head cut off on Tower Hill."
"Thanks, dear boy."
Of course he married her. On the morning of the specified Thursday she went out for a stroll, and he went out for a stroll, and they met at the registrar's, and, as she put it, the deed was done. And, when the deed was done, she went home to lunch, and he went, not home to lunch, but to a private place, where he could swear. Now here they were, both of them, at Tuttenham. They encountered each other on the doorstep. She said, "How do you do, Mr. Stanham?" And he said, "How do you do, Miss Cullen?"
