Chapter XVIII.Mr. Priestley Solves His Last ProblemMr. Priestley returned to London with emotions that were decidedly mixed. His delight in his successful revenge was almost swamped in the feelings caused by Cynthia’s utterly unscrupulous suggestion. He knew, of course, that he could never act upon it: to do so would be the act of a cad, a poltroon, and a blackguard. But there was no harm in allowing it to titillate his mind.Laura eternally in that empty arm-chair…. Laura available every night and every morning for kisses that need not be in the least avuncular…. Laura’s smile, Laura’s pretty face, the way Laura’s eyebrows fascinatingly just did not meet when she was perplexed, his to contemplate for the rest of his life…. Mr. Priestley sighed and, having looked on this picture, looked on that. Those rooms of his without Laura in them…. Only Barker…. He and Barker, alone together for ever more…. Mr. Priestley sighed again.And why, Mr. Priestley put it to himself, had he been at such pains actually to obtain a real, genuine special licence, made out in his own name and that of Laura Howard? True, Cynthia had made rather a point of it, but it was really quite unnecessary. Just to mention that he had one would have been quite enough. He had not even shown it to her. It was very strange. Why had he done that?Mr. Priestley was an honest man, even with himself. He knew quite well why he had done it. Because he wanted very badly indeed to marry Laura, and the breathless thrill he had obtained by buying a special licence made out in her name had been cheap at the price.He reached his rooms in a thoroughly unhappy state. His triumph at Duffley was as dust and ashes in his mouth. Dust and ashes make very poor eating. For, of course, when Laura heard his story, she would naturally have nothing more to do with him. She was a high-spirited girl, and—— Of course she wouldn’t.Laura received him with undisguised relief. During his absence she had succeeded in working herself up into a very pretty state of nerves. In the old days Laura and nerves were two unmixable components, like fire and water, or stockbrokers and water, to put it more forcibly; now she felt she could write an encyclopedia on them and then only have touched the fringe of her knowledge.“Oh, Matthew!” she exclaimed, the moment Mr. Priestley entered the study. “Thank goodness you’re still all right! I’d made sure you’d been arrested this time.”Mr. Priestley looked at her wistfully. What a low hound he was! It was perfectly right and proper for Laura to play jokes upon him, of course; but for him to divert the joke to back-fire upon its own originator! A terribly low hound.“Would you have been sorry if I had, Laura?” he asked.“You know I should. I—I should never have forgiven myself,” said Laura, who during the communings with her own soul that afternoon had reached at any rate one sensible decision. “You see, it’s—it’s all my own fault. I’ve been on the verge of telling you the truth a hundred times, and goodness only knows why I never did.” She paused awkwardly. “You see,” she blurted out, “the whole thing started as just a silly joke.”“A joke?” echoed Mr. Priestley stupidly. Somehow this was a development he had not anticipated.“Yes,” Laura continued rapidly. “I don’t dare wonder what you’re going to think of me, considering how kind you’ve been and—and everything, but this is the truth.” She proceeded to tell it.Mr. Priestley listened with one ear, his other busy with the almost audible buzzing of his own brain. What was Laura working up to? What was he going to do when she had worked up to it? What—what—what?Laura went on, excusing nothing, glossing over nothing, pouring upon her own devoted head every drop of blame.“And now this other extraordinary affair crops up,” she concluded, and mentioned her telepathic theory. “That must be the explanation. It’s quite possible, isn’t it? Oh, Mr. Priestley——”“Matthew,” interjected Mr. Priestley automatically.“Matthew, will you ever forgive me?”Mr. Priestley looked dumbly at the contrite spectacle before him. He did not speak because every bone was busy telling him that this was not Laura’s climax. What was coming next he had not the faintest idea, but he did not wish to commit himself.“Of course,” continued Laura, unforgiven, “I know that if—if we were arrested we’ve only got to tell the truth, and we’ve got all the others to back us up; but what I don’t know is how long it would be before the authorities believed us. Naturally I’ve known all the time that we’re not in anydanger, but, on the other hand, we certainly are in a mess. What your friend at the Foreign Office told you shows that we’re in for a terrible lot of bother, to say the very least.”“Yes,” said Mr. Priestley mechanically. “Very least.” What was she working up to?“And so,” said Laura, “considering that it’s all my fault, and—and I let you in for it all, I will, if it’s any use to you, I——”“Yes?” helped Mr. Priestley breathlessly.Laura gulped. “I will marry you to-morrow morning at the registry office if you really want me to,” she said with a rush.Something, stretched already to snapping-point, suddenly gave way inside Mr. Priestley. He didn’t know it, but it was his conscience.His face one large pink beam, he gathered the unready Laura into his arms and kissed her ardently. “You darling girl!” he exclaimed. “You dearest, darling, sweet girl!”“Matthew!” gasped the sweet girl. “You don’t mean that you——”“Love you?” beamed Mr. Priestley, far too excited to be self-conscious. “Indeed, yes. I’ve loved you ever since you let me stay in the bedroom that night. It was darling and sweet of you, like everything else you do.”For some obscure reason Laura made no effort to release herself. “And you don’t mind the—the other thing?” she asked, vividly conscious of certain of her actions with regard to Mr. Priestley which had been anything but darling or sweet. “The way I deceived you, and took advantage of your good nature?”“Dear me, no. Most natural. Charmingly high-spirited of you.”“Well,” said Laura a little dryly, “it’s rather lucky you like me, isn’t it? Considering we’ve got to get married apparently.”“Laura,” said Mr. Priestley, ceasing to beam, “I—I suppose you don’t happen to—well, to like me a little bit, too, do you?”Feminine emotion is a delicate instrument, and no one can expect to play on a delicate instrument without practice. To Mr. Priestley’s consternation Laura burst into unexpected tears, tore herself from his arms, and ran from the room, crying out as she did so: “Good Heavens, I—I’mmarryingyou, aren’t I? What more do you want?”Mr. Priestley stared after her as if imagining his eyes to be magnets and able to draw her back again. Finding they did not work in this way, he hurried after her. Her bedroom door was locked and Mr. Priestley, whispering urgently outside that he had something most important to tell her that would alter everything and wouldn’t she please come back and hear it, met with nothing but pointed, if tearful requests to go away. Looking round after three minutes’ fruitless work, he caught Barker’s disapproving but interested eye on him from the kitchen door. Barker’s eye succeeded where Laura’s entreaties had failed. Mr. Priestley wentaway, his urgent news untold.Seventeen times during the course of the evening did he return to whisper at Laura’s door, seventeen times he retired baffled. Only once did Laura open it, and that was to pull in a loaded dinner-tray which Barker, surmising madly, had placed on the floor outside.Mr. Priestley spent a miserable evening. Later on he went, in the deepest dejection, to bed.But not to sleep. And as he turned restlessly from side to side and the thought of never seeing Laura again, after he had once told her the truth, grew more and more unbearable. Temptation came to Matthew Priestley. He struggled with it; he struggled with it manfully for a very long time (until four minutes past three, to be utterly accurate); and then Temptation, as it usually does, won. Hewouldmarry Laura to-morrow, as Cynthia had suggested. Hewouldmake sure of her first, and let the future look after itself. Oh, base Mr. Priestley!Breakfast (which he took alone) found him confirmed in his turpitude. As he poured out his own coffee he knew he could not do without Laura and was going to stick at nothing to get her; as he passed himself the marmalade he told himself that all was fair in love and war; as he gazed at the unoccupied place beside him he tried, half-heartedly, to mitigate his villainy with the reflection that even marriage is not irrevocable; if Laura objected too strenuously, she could remain a wife in name only until the divorce was through. As he poured out his second cup of coffee he knew that he had not the faintest intention of letting Laura remain a wife in name only, and didn’t care a rap how base he was.Pat Doyle would have been delighted. Mr. Priestley’s days of turniphood were done with forever. It was no snail who folded up Mr. Priestley’s napkin and banged it down on the table with a thud that made the crockery jump.“Good gracious, Matthew dear,” remarked a voice at the door. “I hope you’re not going to do that to me after we’re married.”Mr. Priestley spun round. In the doorway, cool, smiling, astonishingly cheerful, stood Laura, already hatted, coated and gloved. He gaped at her.“Good-morning,” said Laura, approaching him.“Good-morning,” mumbled Mr. Priestley.Laura tilted her face a little more obviously. “Aren’t you going to kiss me? It’s the last time you’ll be supposed to kiss an unmarried girl, you know. After this there’ll be nothing but humdrum married kisses for you. I warn you, I shall be terribly wifely.”“God bless my soul!” said Mr. Priestley, kissing her gingerly. Was this the same girl who had fled last night, weeping at the bare idea of accompanying him to a registry office this morning?“Oughtn’t we to be starting?” said Laura happily. “You were very late for breakfast, you know, considering it’s your wedding-morning. ‘Tra-la-la-a-a-a! for ’tis my we-hedding morning!’” She hummed a bar or two ofThe Yeoman’s Weddingwith a roguish smile.With some difficulty Mr. Priestley remembered that he was a villain. “I’ll get my hat on,” he said gruffly, and marched out.Laura went with him into the tiny hall, helped him on with his coat, brushed his hat, and gave him his gloves. “Of course,” she said, “by rights I ought to wait till we get back before doing this: it’s soverywifely, isn’t it? By the way, dear, have you got the ring?”Mr. Priestley reminded himself that he was a blackguard. “Er—no,” he admitted. “I’m afraid I’d never thought of it.” Mr. Priestley may have been a blackguard, but he was a very inefficient one.With complete composure Laura slipped off one of her own and gave it to him. “We can use that, and get the real one later. It’s very irregular, but I do hope it won’t be unlucky. Still, you could hardly be expected to think of everything, poor dear, could you? Forgive my asking, but have you got the licence?”Mr. Priestley beamed. Then he remembered that he was a cad and stopped beaming. Cads never beam. “Yes,” he said brusquely. “I——” He felt in his breast-pocket. “God bless my soul, I’ve left it in the other suit!” A most inferior cad, Mr. Priestley.In due course Laura produced him at the registry office, complete with ring and licence. On the steps of it were Dora, George, Pat Doyle, Cynthia, Guy, Monica, and Alan. They raised a hearty cheer as the taxi drew up and its occupants emerged.“God bless my soul!” said Mr. Priestley, and he had never said it with more feeling.Cynthia hurried forward and drew him aside. “I told the others, and we thought we’d come up just in case you did take my advice,” she whispered. “I’m delighted, Mr. Priestley! And don’t bother—nobody will say a word to Laura. Come along inside.”Mr. Priestley looked at Laura. Undoubtedly she was just as bewildered at seeing their escort as himself. She did not look very pleased either. Laura did not often blush, but she was making up for lost time now. The party trooped inside.And there Mr. Priestley and his Laura were, without a shadow of doubt, married as tightly as the law could do it.“I’ve booked a private room and something in the way of a wedding-breakfast at the Trafalgar Square Hotel, Priestley,” said Guy, amid the back-clapping and kissing later, as Mr. Priestley was wondering dazedly whether he ought to smack Dora on the back and kiss Pat Doyle, or smack Cynthia on the back and kiss the registrar. “You take Laura along in a taxi, and we’ll follow.”Somehow this seemed to happen.“God bless my soul!” said Mr. Priestley, still dazed.“The idiots!” said Laura, half-way between laughter and tears.Mr. Priestley nerved himself for his effort. He knew that the truth was bound to come out at the hotel, and he wanted to know his fate in private. “Laura, my darling,” be began very nervously, “I’m afraid I have a confession to make. I—I——” To his surprise he found further speech stopped by two soft lips, not his own.“I know all about that,” came a laughing voice through the soft lips. “And I love you all the more for it, you funny old thing! (Did you know I loved you, by the way? Well, I do. I discovered it this morning.) You see, I got a letter from Cynthia to-day.”“God bl—— Did you really?”“Yes, and she told me everything, not omitting her own advice to you yesterday. She said she thought after all that she’d better warn me, just in case you did take it. But she never said she was going to bring the whole lot of them along, just in case, too.”“Cynthia,” said Mr. Priestley thoughtfully, “seems to have been double-crossing everybody.” It was an echo of the late Mr. Mullins, recently defunct.“Then let’s double-cross her!” cried Laura, with sudden inspiration. “Let’s go straight back home, pack your bag (mine’s packed already) and go off for a honeymoon at once, instead of that wedding-breakfast and all their silly jokes.”Mr. Priestley looked at his wife with speechless admiration. Then he recovered himself and leaned perilously out to address the driver.“Mr. Priestley,” said Laura, when her husband had returned to safety and her side, “don’t you think it’s time you kissed your wife? It’s the right thing to do in the taxi after the wedding, I’ve always understood.” She looked at him laughingly, but there was a faint flush on either cheek which Mr. Priestley found quite incredibly adorable. “Say: ‘Mrs. Priestley, may I beg the favour, madam, of a caress, an it please you?’”“‘Mrs. Priestley,’” replied her husband in tones of awe. “‘Mrs.Priestley!’”Laura made a little movement towards him, and Mr. Priestley completely forgot the rest of his speech.It didn’t seem to matter.The End
Mr. Priestley returned to London with emotions that were decidedly mixed. His delight in his successful revenge was almost swamped in the feelings caused by Cynthia’s utterly unscrupulous suggestion. He knew, of course, that he could never act upon it: to do so would be the act of a cad, a poltroon, and a blackguard. But there was no harm in allowing it to titillate his mind.
Laura eternally in that empty arm-chair…. Laura available every night and every morning for kisses that need not be in the least avuncular…. Laura’s smile, Laura’s pretty face, the way Laura’s eyebrows fascinatingly just did not meet when she was perplexed, his to contemplate for the rest of his life…. Mr. Priestley sighed and, having looked on this picture, looked on that. Those rooms of his without Laura in them…. Only Barker…. He and Barker, alone together for ever more…. Mr. Priestley sighed again.
And why, Mr. Priestley put it to himself, had he been at such pains actually to obtain a real, genuine special licence, made out in his own name and that of Laura Howard? True, Cynthia had made rather a point of it, but it was really quite unnecessary. Just to mention that he had one would have been quite enough. He had not even shown it to her. It was very strange. Why had he done that?
Mr. Priestley was an honest man, even with himself. He knew quite well why he had done it. Because he wanted very badly indeed to marry Laura, and the breathless thrill he had obtained by buying a special licence made out in her name had been cheap at the price.
He reached his rooms in a thoroughly unhappy state. His triumph at Duffley was as dust and ashes in his mouth. Dust and ashes make very poor eating. For, of course, when Laura heard his story, she would naturally have nothing more to do with him. She was a high-spirited girl, and—— Of course she wouldn’t.
Laura received him with undisguised relief. During his absence she had succeeded in working herself up into a very pretty state of nerves. In the old days Laura and nerves were two unmixable components, like fire and water, or stockbrokers and water, to put it more forcibly; now she felt she could write an encyclopedia on them and then only have touched the fringe of her knowledge.
“Oh, Matthew!” she exclaimed, the moment Mr. Priestley entered the study. “Thank goodness you’re still all right! I’d made sure you’d been arrested this time.”
Mr. Priestley looked at her wistfully. What a low hound he was! It was perfectly right and proper for Laura to play jokes upon him, of course; but for him to divert the joke to back-fire upon its own originator! A terribly low hound.
“Would you have been sorry if I had, Laura?” he asked.
“You know I should. I—I should never have forgiven myself,” said Laura, who during the communings with her own soul that afternoon had reached at any rate one sensible decision. “You see, it’s—it’s all my own fault. I’ve been on the verge of telling you the truth a hundred times, and goodness only knows why I never did.” She paused awkwardly. “You see,” she blurted out, “the whole thing started as just a silly joke.”
“A joke?” echoed Mr. Priestley stupidly. Somehow this was a development he had not anticipated.
“Yes,” Laura continued rapidly. “I don’t dare wonder what you’re going to think of me, considering how kind you’ve been and—and everything, but this is the truth.” She proceeded to tell it.
Mr. Priestley listened with one ear, his other busy with the almost audible buzzing of his own brain. What was Laura working up to? What was he going to do when she had worked up to it? What—what—what?
Laura went on, excusing nothing, glossing over nothing, pouring upon her own devoted head every drop of blame.
“And now this other extraordinary affair crops up,” she concluded, and mentioned her telepathic theory. “That must be the explanation. It’s quite possible, isn’t it? Oh, Mr. Priestley——”
“Matthew,” interjected Mr. Priestley automatically.
“Matthew, will you ever forgive me?”
Mr. Priestley looked dumbly at the contrite spectacle before him. He did not speak because every bone was busy telling him that this was not Laura’s climax. What was coming next he had not the faintest idea, but he did not wish to commit himself.
“Of course,” continued Laura, unforgiven, “I know that if—if we were arrested we’ve only got to tell the truth, and we’ve got all the others to back us up; but what I don’t know is how long it would be before the authorities believed us. Naturally I’ve known all the time that we’re not in anydanger, but, on the other hand, we certainly are in a mess. What your friend at the Foreign Office told you shows that we’re in for a terrible lot of bother, to say the very least.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Priestley mechanically. “Very least.” What was she working up to?
“And so,” said Laura, “considering that it’s all my fault, and—and I let you in for it all, I will, if it’s any use to you, I——”
“Yes?” helped Mr. Priestley breathlessly.
Laura gulped. “I will marry you to-morrow morning at the registry office if you really want me to,” she said with a rush.
Something, stretched already to snapping-point, suddenly gave way inside Mr. Priestley. He didn’t know it, but it was his conscience.
His face one large pink beam, he gathered the unready Laura into his arms and kissed her ardently. “You darling girl!” he exclaimed. “You dearest, darling, sweet girl!”
“Matthew!” gasped the sweet girl. “You don’t mean that you——”
“Love you?” beamed Mr. Priestley, far too excited to be self-conscious. “Indeed, yes. I’ve loved you ever since you let me stay in the bedroom that night. It was darling and sweet of you, like everything else you do.”
For some obscure reason Laura made no effort to release herself. “And you don’t mind the—the other thing?” she asked, vividly conscious of certain of her actions with regard to Mr. Priestley which had been anything but darling or sweet. “The way I deceived you, and took advantage of your good nature?”
“Dear me, no. Most natural. Charmingly high-spirited of you.”
“Well,” said Laura a little dryly, “it’s rather lucky you like me, isn’t it? Considering we’ve got to get married apparently.”
“Laura,” said Mr. Priestley, ceasing to beam, “I—I suppose you don’t happen to—well, to like me a little bit, too, do you?”
Feminine emotion is a delicate instrument, and no one can expect to play on a delicate instrument without practice. To Mr. Priestley’s consternation Laura burst into unexpected tears, tore herself from his arms, and ran from the room, crying out as she did so: “Good Heavens, I—I’mmarryingyou, aren’t I? What more do you want?”
Mr. Priestley stared after her as if imagining his eyes to be magnets and able to draw her back again. Finding they did not work in this way, he hurried after her. Her bedroom door was locked and Mr. Priestley, whispering urgently outside that he had something most important to tell her that would alter everything and wouldn’t she please come back and hear it, met with nothing but pointed, if tearful requests to go away. Looking round after three minutes’ fruitless work, he caught Barker’s disapproving but interested eye on him from the kitchen door. Barker’s eye succeeded where Laura’s entreaties had failed. Mr. Priestley wentaway, his urgent news untold.
Seventeen times during the course of the evening did he return to whisper at Laura’s door, seventeen times he retired baffled. Only once did Laura open it, and that was to pull in a loaded dinner-tray which Barker, surmising madly, had placed on the floor outside.
Mr. Priestley spent a miserable evening. Later on he went, in the deepest dejection, to bed.
But not to sleep. And as he turned restlessly from side to side and the thought of never seeing Laura again, after he had once told her the truth, grew more and more unbearable. Temptation came to Matthew Priestley. He struggled with it; he struggled with it manfully for a very long time (until four minutes past three, to be utterly accurate); and then Temptation, as it usually does, won. Hewouldmarry Laura to-morrow, as Cynthia had suggested. Hewouldmake sure of her first, and let the future look after itself. Oh, base Mr. Priestley!
Breakfast (which he took alone) found him confirmed in his turpitude. As he poured out his own coffee he knew he could not do without Laura and was going to stick at nothing to get her; as he passed himself the marmalade he told himself that all was fair in love and war; as he gazed at the unoccupied place beside him he tried, half-heartedly, to mitigate his villainy with the reflection that even marriage is not irrevocable; if Laura objected too strenuously, she could remain a wife in name only until the divorce was through. As he poured out his second cup of coffee he knew that he had not the faintest intention of letting Laura remain a wife in name only, and didn’t care a rap how base he was.
Pat Doyle would have been delighted. Mr. Priestley’s days of turniphood were done with forever. It was no snail who folded up Mr. Priestley’s napkin and banged it down on the table with a thud that made the crockery jump.
“Good gracious, Matthew dear,” remarked a voice at the door. “I hope you’re not going to do that to me after we’re married.”
Mr. Priestley spun round. In the doorway, cool, smiling, astonishingly cheerful, stood Laura, already hatted, coated and gloved. He gaped at her.
“Good-morning,” said Laura, approaching him.
“Good-morning,” mumbled Mr. Priestley.
Laura tilted her face a little more obviously. “Aren’t you going to kiss me? It’s the last time you’ll be supposed to kiss an unmarried girl, you know. After this there’ll be nothing but humdrum married kisses for you. I warn you, I shall be terribly wifely.”
“God bless my soul!” said Mr. Priestley, kissing her gingerly. Was this the same girl who had fled last night, weeping at the bare idea of accompanying him to a registry office this morning?
“Oughtn’t we to be starting?” said Laura happily. “You were very late for breakfast, you know, considering it’s your wedding-morning. ‘Tra-la-la-a-a-a! for ’tis my we-hedding morning!’” She hummed a bar or two ofThe Yeoman’s Weddingwith a roguish smile.
With some difficulty Mr. Priestley remembered that he was a villain. “I’ll get my hat on,” he said gruffly, and marched out.
Laura went with him into the tiny hall, helped him on with his coat, brushed his hat, and gave him his gloves. “Of course,” she said, “by rights I ought to wait till we get back before doing this: it’s soverywifely, isn’t it? By the way, dear, have you got the ring?”
Mr. Priestley reminded himself that he was a blackguard. “Er—no,” he admitted. “I’m afraid I’d never thought of it.” Mr. Priestley may have been a blackguard, but he was a very inefficient one.
With complete composure Laura slipped off one of her own and gave it to him. “We can use that, and get the real one later. It’s very irregular, but I do hope it won’t be unlucky. Still, you could hardly be expected to think of everything, poor dear, could you? Forgive my asking, but have you got the licence?”
Mr. Priestley beamed. Then he remembered that he was a cad and stopped beaming. Cads never beam. “Yes,” he said brusquely. “I——” He felt in his breast-pocket. “God bless my soul, I’ve left it in the other suit!” A most inferior cad, Mr. Priestley.
In due course Laura produced him at the registry office, complete with ring and licence. On the steps of it were Dora, George, Pat Doyle, Cynthia, Guy, Monica, and Alan. They raised a hearty cheer as the taxi drew up and its occupants emerged.
“God bless my soul!” said Mr. Priestley, and he had never said it with more feeling.
Cynthia hurried forward and drew him aside. “I told the others, and we thought we’d come up just in case you did take my advice,” she whispered. “I’m delighted, Mr. Priestley! And don’t bother—nobody will say a word to Laura. Come along inside.”
Mr. Priestley looked at Laura. Undoubtedly she was just as bewildered at seeing their escort as himself. She did not look very pleased either. Laura did not often blush, but she was making up for lost time now. The party trooped inside.
And there Mr. Priestley and his Laura were, without a shadow of doubt, married as tightly as the law could do it.
“I’ve booked a private room and something in the way of a wedding-breakfast at the Trafalgar Square Hotel, Priestley,” said Guy, amid the back-clapping and kissing later, as Mr. Priestley was wondering dazedly whether he ought to smack Dora on the back and kiss Pat Doyle, or smack Cynthia on the back and kiss the registrar. “You take Laura along in a taxi, and we’ll follow.”
Somehow this seemed to happen.
“God bless my soul!” said Mr. Priestley, still dazed.
“The idiots!” said Laura, half-way between laughter and tears.
Mr. Priestley nerved himself for his effort. He knew that the truth was bound to come out at the hotel, and he wanted to know his fate in private. “Laura, my darling,” be began very nervously, “I’m afraid I have a confession to make. I—I——” To his surprise he found further speech stopped by two soft lips, not his own.
“I know all about that,” came a laughing voice through the soft lips. “And I love you all the more for it, you funny old thing! (Did you know I loved you, by the way? Well, I do. I discovered it this morning.) You see, I got a letter from Cynthia to-day.”
“God bl—— Did you really?”
“Yes, and she told me everything, not omitting her own advice to you yesterday. She said she thought after all that she’d better warn me, just in case you did take it. But she never said she was going to bring the whole lot of them along, just in case, too.”
“Cynthia,” said Mr. Priestley thoughtfully, “seems to have been double-crossing everybody.” It was an echo of the late Mr. Mullins, recently defunct.
“Then let’s double-cross her!” cried Laura, with sudden inspiration. “Let’s go straight back home, pack your bag (mine’s packed already) and go off for a honeymoon at once, instead of that wedding-breakfast and all their silly jokes.”
Mr. Priestley looked at his wife with speechless admiration. Then he recovered himself and leaned perilously out to address the driver.
“Mr. Priestley,” said Laura, when her husband had returned to safety and her side, “don’t you think it’s time you kissed your wife? It’s the right thing to do in the taxi after the wedding, I’ve always understood.” She looked at him laughingly, but there was a faint flush on either cheek which Mr. Priestley found quite incredibly adorable. “Say: ‘Mrs. Priestley, may I beg the favour, madam, of a caress, an it please you?’”
“‘Mrs. Priestley,’” replied her husband in tones of awe. “‘Mrs.Priestley!’”
Laura made a little movement towards him, and Mr. Priestley completely forgot the rest of his speech.
It didn’t seem to matter.
The End