“Yes, yes! True, true—very true.” Came another distressing pause while Amos considered. “You see, it’s like this, Miss Madel—Miss Madel—Miss Theddon—getting along famously, are we not?—nothing could please his mother and myself just now more than the knowledge that he is married and—safely in the hands of some good and firm-willed woman. And so—beautiful apartment you have here!—I decided I would come down and talk it over with you.”
“I see,” Madelaine responded. “You’ve come to enlist my aid, perhaps, in finding a wife for Gordon. Or my advice as to how to proceed; which is it?”
“Well—er—in fact, a little of both and none of either.” Amos was happily growing more at ease. He stored his handkerchief in his outside breast pocket, left a couple of inches exposed, put his pink, manicured finger tips precisely together between his knees.
“The idea is this, Miss Madelaine. The boy is—well—the boy is—deeply impressed by yourself and—purely as a father—with a father’s paternal interest, understand—I have called to appraise for myself the extent of the gulf between you and—get you to consider the matter for—er—early negotiation.”
“What matter? Just what do you mean?”
“The matter, Miss Madelaine, of—er—becoming his—wife!”
Amos breathed once more. The worst was over.
Madelaine could not control the flush that crept toward her temples.
“Did Gordon ask that you do this?” she demanded.
“Not at all! Not at all! The idea is my own entirely—absolutely my own!” Amos inferred that as an idea it certainly had its points and on the whole he was rather proud of it.