"That's what I arranged with Mr. Oldfield. I said to him, 'Mr. Oldfield, after my marriage--at which I trust you'll be present--I hope to go abroad with my wife for a month, if I can be spared from the office.' He said to me, 'Clifford, why not make it three months?' I stared; he went on: 'A man isn't married often!'" "Frank!" "That's what he said; and it's true. 'Therefore there's no reason why he shouldn't make the most of it when he is; you take your wife abroad for three months, I'll see you're spared from the office.' And that's how it was arranged." "Yes, and then he goes and disappears, and I'm not to be married at all, and that's how it's disarranged." "Not a bit of it; the wedding needn't be postponed; the more I think of it the less reason do I see why it should." "Frank! Then what ever have you been talking to me about ever since I don't know when!" "Mr. Oldfield's continued absence needn't prevent my sparing a day to get away from the office to be married." "Needn't it! I'm sure it's very nice of you to talk about sparing a whole day for a trifling thing like that." "In any case, all that need suffer is the three months' tour. If Mr. Oldfield hasn't turned up by Thursday, after we're married we'll go for a weekend honeymoon. I'll return to the office on Monday. The house is ready, all it needs is its mistress; you'll be installed a little sooner than you thought, and when Mr. Oldfield does appear we'll go for our three months' tour." Miss Ross sat looking at him with rather a complicated expression on her pretty face, as if she did not quite know what to make of his proposition. "Frank, why didn't you think of it before? instead of worrying me, and making my hair come out by handfuls, by keeping on saying that if Mr. Oldfield didn't return in time, you couldn't possibly desert Peter Piper's Popular Pills, and that therefore the wedding would have to be postponed till you didn't know when." "I don't know; but I didn't. I fancy, sweetheart, that it's because I was so looking forward to that scamper through Europe. It's so long since I had a real holiday--and such a holiday--with you! If you only knew how often I have dreamed of it!" "And do you think I haven't dreamed of it too?" They were sitting very close together; she looked at him with almost comic wistfulness as she added, "A week-end honeymoon will be rather a comedown, won't it?" "Compared to that elaborate tour, which we have so carefully planned, in which we were to go to so many delightful places, and do so many delicious things, rather! But it won't spoil by being kept; we'll have it; and in the meanwhile a week-end will be better than nothing." "Frank, I'll tell you something. Rather than that the wedding should be put off I'd go straight home with you to our home, from the church doors; or I'd return with you to the office, and sit on a stool, till your day's work was done." "Sweetheart!"