第14章

For several minutes she stood beneath it, smiling back.Then she turned and put her hand involuntarily on the boy's shoulder."Oh, Marty!" she said."I AM sorry."The boy gave one quick upward glance, and cleared his throat."Itold you that this house is mine.It isn't.It's yours.It's the only way, if you're to remain in the city.Is it good enough? Do you want to stay as much as all that?"The puzzled look came back.For a moment Joan was silent, worrying out the meaning of Martin's abrupt and rather cryptic words.There seemed to be a tremendous amount of fuss because she happened to be a girl.

Martin spoke again before she had emerged from the thicket of inward questions.She was only eighteen, after all.

"I mean, you can marry me if you like." he said, "and then no one can take you back." He was amazed at his courage and hideously afraid that she would laugh at him.He had never dared to say how much he loved her.

She did laugh, but with a ring of so much pleasure and relief that the blood flew to his head."Why, Marty, what a brain! What organization! Of course I'll marry you.Why ever didn't we think of that last night?"But before he could pull himself together a man-servant entered with an air of extreme surprise."I didn't know you'd come home, sir," he said, "until I saw the suit-case." He saw Joan, and his eyes rounded.

"I was just going to ring," said Martin."We want some breakfast.

Will you see to it, please?" Alone again, Martin held out his hand to Joan, in an odd, boyish way.And she took it, boyishly too.

"Thank you, Marty, dear," she said."You've found the magic carpet.

My troubles are over; and oh, what a pretty little bomb I shall have for Grandmamma! And now let's explore my house.If it's all like this, I shall simply love it!" And away she darted into the hall.

"And now," said Joan, "being duly married,--and you certainly do make things move when you start, Marty,--to send a telegram to Grandmother! Lead me to the nearest place."Certain that every person in that crowded street saw in them a newly married couple, Martin tried to hide his joy under a mask of extreme callousness and universal indifference.With the challenging antagonism of an English husband,--whose national habit it is invariably to stalk ahead of his women-kind while they scramble along at his heels,--he led the way well in advance of his unblushing bride.But his eyes were black with emotion.He saw rainbows all over the sky, and rings of bright light round the square heads of all the buildings which competed in an endeavor to touch the clouds; and there was a song in his heart.

They sat down side by side in a Western Union office, dallied for a moment or two with the tied pencils the points of which are always blunt, and to the incessant longs and shorts of a dozen telegraph instruments they put their epoch-making news on the neat blanks.

Martin did not intend to be left out of it.His best pal was off the map, and so he chose a second-best friend and wrote triumphantly:

"Have been married to-day.Staying in New York for honeymoon.How are you?" He was sorry that he couldn't remember the addresses of a hundred other men.He felt in the mood to pelt the earth with such telegrams as that.

"Listen," said Joan, her eyes dancing with misj chief."I think this is a pretty good effort: 'Blessings and congratulations on her marriage to-day may be sent to Mrs.Martin Gray, at 26 East Sixty-seventh Street, New York.--Joan.' How's that?"It was the first time the boy had seen that name, and he blinked and smiled and got very red."Terse and literary," he said, dying to put his arms round her and kiss her before all mankind."They'll have something to talk about at dinner to-night.A nice whack in the eye for Gleave."He managed to achieve a supremely blase air while the words were being counted, but it crumbled instantly when the telegraphist shot a quick look at Joan and gave Martin a grin of cordial congratulation.