“Well, that is only fair after all,” said he, rather taken aback.
“It is quite out of the question for me to marry you before I can darn a sock,” she continued, “but in six years I shall have perfected myself in that difficult art. Will you wait for me six years?”
This she said to try his love.
“I will wait,” said he, who really loved her, and knew something about women.
Now, at the end of three months Peter-Wise was still waiting for Theophania, and she realised that he would keep his word for the rest of the six years. But meanwhile she had learnt to darn as beautifully as Mary and Sally and Polly and Minnie and Lucy, who by this time were betrothed respectively to John and James and William and Tom and Adam. So she came to him one day with an example of her darning, and said:
“Peter, it has not taken me so long to learn to darn as I thought it would. How would it be if we were married before the six years are up?”
“We will get married whenever you please, dear heart,” he said, not surprised.
“Well then,” she replied, “—to-morrow.”
And they were married at eleven o’clock the next morning.