I went up to London to-day, and had an interview. The result of that is that I am some thousands to the good, that Uncle Simon is well off for the rest of his life and will require no more assistance, and that my three hundred a year is quite clear for ever and ever and ever.”
“Then we can marry,” cried Miss Kendal with a gasp of delight.
“Whenever you choose—next week if you like.”
“In January then—just after Christmas. We’ll go on a trip to Italy and return to take a flat in London.
Oh, Archie, I am sorry I thought so badly of your uncle.
He has behaved very well.
And what a mercy it is that he will require no more assistance!
You are sure he will not.”
“If he does, he won’t get it,” said Hope candidly. “While I was a bachelor I could assist him; but when I am married I must look after myself and my wife.” He gave Lucy a hug. “It’s all right now, dear, and Uncle Simon has behaved excellently—far better than I expected.
We shall go to Italy for the honeymoon and need not hurry back until we—well, say until we quarrel.”
“In that case we shall live in Italy for the rest of our lives,” said Lucy with twinkling eyes; “but we must come back in a year and take a studio in Chelsea.”
“Why not in Gartley?
Remember, the Professor will be lonely.”
“No, he won’t.
Mrs. Jasher, as I told you, intends to marry him.”
“He might not wish to marry her”
“That doesn’t matter,” rejoined Lucy, with the cleverness of a woman. “She can manage to bring the marriage about.
Besides, I want to break with the old life here, and begin quite a new one with you.
When I am your wife and Mrs. Jasher is my step-father’s, everything will be capitally arranged.”
“Well, I hope so,” said Archie heartily, “for I want you all to myself and have no desire to share you with anyone else.
But I say,” he glanced at his watch; “it is getting towards nine o’clock, and I am desperately hungry.
Can’t we go to dinner?”
“Not until Mrs. Jasher arrives,” said Lucy primly.
“Oh, bother—!”
Hope, being quite exasperated with hunger, would have launched out into a speech condemning the widow’s unpunctuality, when in the hall below the drawing-room was heard the sound of the door opening and closing.
Without doubt this was Mrs. Jasher arriving at last, and Lucy ran out of the room and down the stairs to welcome her in her eagerness to get Archie seated at the dinner table.
The young man lingered by the open door of the drawing-room, ready to welcome the widow, when he heard Lucy utter an exclamation of surprise and became aware that she was ascending the stairs along with Professor Braddock.
At once he reflected there would be trouble, since he was in the house with Lucy, and lacked the necessary chaperon which Braddock’s primitive Anglo-Saxon instincts insisted upon.
“I did not know you were returning to-night,” Lucy was saying when she re-entered the drawing-room with her step-father.
“I arrived by the six o’clock train,” explained the Professor, unwinding a large red scarf from his neck, and struggling out of his overcoat with the assistance of his daughter. “Ha, Hope, good evening.”
“Where have you been since?” asked Lucy, throwing the Professor’s coat and wraps on to a chair.
“With Mrs. Jasher,” said Braddock, warming his plump hands at the fire. “So you must blame me that she is not here to preside at dinner as the chaperon of you young people.”
Lucy and her lover glanced at one another in surprise.
This light and airy tone was a new one for the Professor to take.
Instead of being angry, he seemed to be unusually gay, and looked at them in quite a jocular manner for a dry-as-dust scientist.
“We waited dinner for her, father,” ventured Lucy timidly.
“Then I am ready to eat it,” announced Braddock. “I am extremely hungry, my dear.
I can’t live on love, you know.”
“Live on love?” Lucy stared, and Archie laughed quietly.
“Oh yes, you may smile and look astonished;” went on the Professor good-humoredly, “but science does not destroy the primeval instincts entirely.
Lucy, my dear,” he took her hand and patted it, “while in London and in lodgings, it was borne in upon me forcibly how lonely I was and how lonely I would be when you married our young friend yonder.
I had intended to come down to-morrow, but to-night, such was my feeling of loneliness that I considered favorably your idea that I should find a second helpmate in Mrs. Jasher.
I have always had a profound admiration for that lady, and so—on the spur of the moment, as I may say—I decided to come down this evening and propose.”
“Oh,” Lucy clapped her hands, very well satisfied with the unexpected news, “and have you?”
“Mrs. Jasher,” said the Professor gravely, “did me the honor to promise to become my wife this evening.”
“She will become your wife this evening?” said Archie, smiling.
Braddock, with one of those odd twists of humor which were characteristic of him, became irascible.
“Confound it, sir, don’t I speak English,” he snapped, with his eyes glaring rebuke. “She promised this evening to become Mrs. Braddock.
We shall marry—so we have arranged—in the springtime, which is the natural pairing season for human beings as well as for birds.
And I am glad to say that Mrs. Jasher takes a deep interest in archaeology.”