"I'll own the thought crossed my mind. But I wouldn't consider it. You looked too sad for a bride."
Agatha put her hand into his quite shamelessly. "Of course I would look sad if I had been so silly as to marry somebody else."
"Who are these children anyway?" Forbes asked, as if he had just thought of it.
"Orphans. Orphans who are going to be adopted. The homes have been investigated and they're all right. Now I'm going to leave the children for a six months' trial, and if at the end of that time everybody is satisfied, they will be legally adopted." Agatha added casually that they would reach the baby's future home at five o'clock and that she would be rather glad to get him off her hands before nightfall. Forbes recalled a statement of Charlie Briggs much to the same effect, and was man enough to apologize mentally to the youngster.
Agatha's next remark had to Forbes a delicious suggestion of wifely authority. "Why aren't you wearing your glasses?"
He explained the fate of those cherished belongings and did his best to make light of the whole affair. But Agatha was not to be deceived. Her eyes widened to surprising proportions. Her face grew white.
"You might have been killed. It's a miracle you weren't killed."
His distress over the discovery that she was crying was spiced with ecstasy. She interrupted his clumsy efforts at comfort with self-accusation. "And if you had been killed, I would have been to blame."
"Why, in heaven's name, dearest? My own folly would have been solely responsible. But when I realized that I had actually spoken face to face with you, and that you were escaping me again, I lost my head completely."
"If I'd told you who I was, you wouldn't have had any reason to risk your life. And so if anything had happened it would have been all my fault."
He took a rather base advantage of her self-reproach. "I'll forgive you on one condition. AsI understand it, after you have made arrangements about the baby you will spend the night at a hotel and take the train to-morrow."
"Yes, that's my plan."
"And my plan is that you marry me to-morrow morning."
"I had intended," Agatha answered reflectively, "to take an eight o'clock train."
"I suppose a later one will do."
"Very likely. But a wedding without a trousseau! I am equal to a trousseau now, you know. I have—or did have a little while ago—a fortune of twelve thousand dollars."
"I can't think," Forbes murmured, "of anything I should enjoy better than helping to select a trousseau—a little later."
"You know I'm responsible for Miss Finch," Agatha said breathlessly. "She's not going to be married after all."
"Miss Finch is a member of my family from now on."
"And Howard! It was all make-believe that he was a young friend of mine. He's really my darling brother."
"And mine as soon as you say the word. Dearlittle Miss Proteus," cried Forbes with a laugh that did not disguise the tenderness of his voice, "I'm afraid to let you out of my sight for fear you'll change into something else, a mermaid or a fairy, and be lost to me forever."
"I'm sure it will disappoint Mrs. Van Horne if I come back with a husband," mused Agatha. "It will seem such a childish performance. And yet—when you've made up your mind that all that's left in life for you is to go on doing your duty and trying to be kind to everybody, and then happiness comes back and knocks at your door, you—you—oh, Burton—it's not in human nature to keep her waiting."
After a party, consisting of a smiling gentleman, a radiant girl and four tired children, had left the train, one of the people who always know the details of everybody's business, sketched their history for the benefit of the owner of the poodle.
"They had a dreadful quarrel, you know, the way young people will, and she was going home to her father's. Somehow or other he learned what train she was to take and got aboard just at the last minute."
The listener knitted blonde brows. "I didn'treally feel sure the woman was in her right mind. She made some absurd statement about those two little girls. Said there was six months' difference in their ages."
"She was so excited she didn't know what she was saying," explained the omniscient traveler. "He sent her messages by the little boy and when she wouldn't pay any attention, he brought her to time by standing on the steps of the rear coach for more than an hour. It was a wonder he wasn't killed."
The stout blonde expressed the opinion that it was woman's place to forgive.
"Well, that melted her, and you can't wonder. The porter in the rear coach told our porter that when they dragged him aboard he hardly had strength to stand on his feet. It didn't take them long to get things fixed up after that. I went for a drink of water after they'd been talking for half an hour or so, and he'd picked up the baby, and I'm pretty sure from the way he held that child, he was using it just as a screen and kissing the mother behind it."
"Awful fretful baby," commented the stout blonde. "I'm glad it won't be on the train to-night."
"Looks as if they'd started out to have a real old-fashioned family," said the omniscient narrator. "None of the children looks like her but the curly-haired girl and the boy are the image of their papa."