The Don put his hand upon his heart. Alice extended hers. The Don took it.
“You have not answered my question.”
“Words cannot ex—”
“Words? Who is talking about words?” And she extended her hand again. “Press that lily fair,—just one little squeeze. She—the rotund smiler—won’t be able to see for half a minute yet. Quick! She is wiping her eyes! Ah! ah! ah! Really and truly? Enough! Desist! We are observed!”
“She is the girl to tackle him!” thought Charley, wiping his eyes.
CHAPTER XLIX.
Charley was right. She was the girl to tackle him, if he was to be tackled at all; but Charley knew that better than the reader, who has had merely a glimpse or so of the irrepressible Alice in her relations with the subject of this Monograph. For Charley had, as mentioned in the last chapter, witnessed innumerable scenes between the two, which had caused him to wipe his eyes and look as though something hurt him; that being his way of laughing before he was married. This being a Monograph, however, I have not felt at liberty to place those scenes before the reader; for a Monograph is, if I understand the term, a paper rigidly confined to one subject; alien topics being admitted only as illustrations throwing light on the main theme. So that the monotony of this narrative, which a hasty reader might attribute to poverty of invention, is in fact due to my rigidly artistic adherence to the Unities. A Monograph I promised, and a Monograph this shall be.
And the theme is not Love.
“Then why did you not say so at first?” I hear you ask, my Ah Yung Whack,—hear you say this in plain English, for in your day all other languages will be as dead as that of Cicero.
I cannot blame you for asking the question, though the answer is ready.