“How nice that is!” said Miss Josephine, gently, with a shade of tender appreciation in her voice.
“But it costs a dreadful deal to live. We all live at hotels, you know—all the boys. And then a fellow has to have his cab: all the boys have cabs. And then we’ve got to have clothes. But I’m economizing on that. I cut myself down to twenty suits last year. I don’t see any use of a fellow’s having more than twenty suits;” and Mr. Margent paused again, intellectually out of breath.
“I think you’re a very extravagant creature,” said the charming Miss Josephine, playfully shaking her finger at him. “If you had a wife to take care of you, you wouldn’t be allowed to spend so much money.”
“Well, do you know, I’ve been thinking of getting married. I was talking with the boys about it the other day. I said I believed a man could support a wife on seven thousand a year—keeping a fellow’s cab, and staying at the hotel, you know, and all that sort of thing”—he hastened to add, with a little anxiety in his voice. “The boys bet I couldn’t, and I bet I could, and I believe it was then that I really made up my mind to get married. Don’t you believe it could be done on that?” Mr. Margent found himself the subject of a suffusion of ideas, and had the appearance of being surprised at his own gifts.
Miss Josephine was of the opinion, in a low voice, and with an expression of intense interest in the lace in her sleeve, that it could be done for that.
“Well, now,” said the ardent youth, moving over to the sofa where she was sitting, and settling himself down beside her, “why shouldn’t we get married? You’re just the kind of girl I like—tip-top, you know. I like a girl with style about her. Come, say yes.” And here the crude outlines of something like a joke, for the first time in Mr. Margent’s history, began to be visible to him in the dim recesses of his obese mind. “Let’s make it buyer sixty days,” and he laughed until his small eyes almost closed.
“And what’s buyer sixty days, you horrid man?”
“Why, don’t you know that? I should have thought you’d know that. It’s when the buyer has sixty days to call for the stock. Let’s get married in sixty days, and we’ll invite all the boys.”
Poor Miss Josephine! Was this her romance? She had not counted on much—but was this all? She was a sensible and practical girl, however, and the instructions of an excellent mother had not been lost upon her. She yielded herself to the embrace of this winsome wooer, her head drooped upon his shoulder, and he was just about to collect the dividend of a kiss, when the hall door swung open with a crash, and no other than Ogla-Moga plunged into the room, with a bundle intended for Miss Slopham. It was Ogla-Moga’s unfortunate peculiarity that all floors were alike to him, and likewise all interiors. He stood in the dark hallway glaring with amazement upon the bewildered couple. Miss Josephine screamed, and Mr. Margent swore with actual animation. Ogla-Moga grew still more excited. He had learned enough of civilized life to know that strangers and intruders were objects of suspicion.
“G’out! g’out!” he roared, with his voice at prairie pitch. “G’out! or I put you out!”