"You recognize, of course, that the situation is exceptional," said
Edith's mother. "You left New York on December 2, and arrived at Euston
on December 13. To-day, December 18, you ask me for my daughter's hand,
after a three days' acquaintance. Is this the usual American pace?"
"That is hardly my fault," I said. "We ran into a nasty bit of weather
off Cape Race and lost twelve hours."
"Still," she said, "under the circumstances you will admit that I have
the right to put a few questions. Edith is all I have. She has naturally
not told me everything, but I gather you have spoken to her a good deal
about yourself."
"Not more than three or four hours at a sitting," I replied.
"And you have never spoken to anyone else as you have to Edith?"
"I have."
"Oh," she said.
"I wish it had been otherwise," I pleaded; "but life is very complex
nowadays on both sides of the Atlantic. Much that I have told Edith I
have also revealed to the passport clerk at Washington and the keeper
of birth records in New York. Something too I confided to the
assistant-book-keeper in the War Zone Bureau at the Custom-House in New
York, to the cashier of the French consulate at home, and to the gateman
of Cunard Pier 54, at the foot of West Fourteenth Street. I am sorry; I
wish Edith had been the first to whom I gave up the inner secrets of my
soul, but the fact is that to some extent she was anticipated by your
Military Control-Officer at Liverpool."
"It might have been worse," she sighed. "You have nice manners and a
good face. At home I suppose you are quite popular?"
"Up to the twenty-fifth of October I shouldn't have said so," I replied.
"But since then a great many people have taken to me. Not quite like
DORIS KEANE, you know, but still I have distributed in a little more
than a month no fewer than three dozen photographs of myself two and
a-half inches square. Your consul at New York took two, the French
Chamber of Commerce took three, and I am having some more ready for the
time when I go to make application for my emergency ration card, in case
your food department proves equally susceptible. I have been asked out
a great deal. The State Department at Washington made me come down for
several weekends and your Military Officer at home had me in on three
successive days."
"Mr. Smith," she said, "you seem an honest man. Do you, in your heart,
believe yourself good enough for my Edith?"
"Had you asked me that six weeks ago," I said, "I should have answered
'No.' Before I spoke to Edith, that very same question flashed up within
me. I saw the golden sheen of her hair in the moonlight--for you do
sometimes have moonlight here in London--and wondered whether I had the
right to speak. Of course I was not good enough for her, but still I
felt that I was not altogether unfit. I might justly ask for her in the
face of high Heaven, the Passport Bureau at Washington, the War Zone
Bureau at the Custom-House, the head clerk at the Cunard office, the
watchman at the pier, the official who changed my American money into
your own very confusing monetary system, the man at the head of the
gang-plank, the man at the foot of the gang-plank, the steward who
filled my alien's declaration, the steward who gave me my landing-card,
several battalions of control officers, and approximately half the
Allied diplomatic services. When I spoke to Edith I had all the
documents in my breast-pocket, and my heart glowed with justifiable
confidence beneath them. The dear girl never asked for my college
certificate and my luggage check, but I have them all here."
"Perhaps it isn't necessary," she said. "You may have her, my dear boy."
"Without even looking at my Czecho-Slovak _visé_ my club dues for 1918,
and my inoculation receipt for typhoid and paratyphoid A and B?" I
stammered.
"You have a nice face," she said.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "WOT'S OUR NOO M.P.'S BIZNESS?"
"'E'S IN THE JOBMASTERING LINE I THINK. I 'EARD 'E ARST TO BE SENT BACK
TO 'ELP CLEAN OUT THE ORGEAN STABLES."]
* * * * *