Once Aboard the Lugger-- The History of George and his MaryHutchinson, A. S. M. (Arthur Stuart-Menteth)
General
Once Aboard the Lugger-- The History of George and his Mary
Hutchinson, A. S. M. (Arthur Stuart-Menteth)
Fiction; Humorous stories
He stopped his pacing to give her a squeezing hug, a kiss upon the
top of the gold hair. Then he went through the steps of a wild dance.
“Marry!” he cried. “Marry, old girl, and let everybody go hang! We'll
have to work it through a registrar. I'm not quite sure how it's done,
but I'll find out tomorrow. I know you both have to have been resident
in the place for a week or so--I'll fix all that. Then we'll peg along
up in the North; and we'll look out for whatever turns up, and we'll
save, and in time we'll buy a practice just like Runnygate.”
Now he sat beside his Mary again; with a tremendous brush painted in
more details of this entrancing picture. Every doubt, every difficulty
he threw to tomorrow--that glad sea in which youth casts its every
trouble. Was he sure he still had the refusal of this locum?--rather!
but he would make certain, tomorrow. Was he sure they both could live
upon the salary?-rather! he would prove it to-morrow. Could they really
get married at a registrar's within a few days?-rather! he'd fix that up
to-morrow. As to the money necessary for the marriage, necessary to tide
over the days till the locum was taken up, why, he knew he could borrow
that--from the Dean or from Professor Wyvern--to-morrow.
They were upon the very crest and flood of their delight when George
noted the gathering dusk.
“I say, it's getting late!” he exclaimed. “I must fix it up with Mrs.
Pinking. We've made no arrangement with her yet.”
Mary agreed: “Yes, dear.” She went on, pretty eyes shining, face aglow:
“Oh, Georgie, think of the last time you brought me here! I had nothing
to expect but going out to work again; and you weren't qualified. And
now--now, although we've lost our little Runnygate home” (she could not
stop a tiny sigh), “we're actually going to be married in a few days!
Georgie, I shan't sleep for hoping everything will turn out all right
to-morrow.”
“It will,” George told her. “It will. Right as rain, old girl.”
Her great sigh of contentment advertised the drink she took of that
sparkling future. “Think of us being together always in a week or
so--belonging! Where will you stay till then? Quite close. Get a room
quite close, Georgie?”
He stared at her. “Why, you old goose, I'm not going.”
She echoed him: “Not going?”
“Of course not. I'm going to get a bedroom here, and we'll have all our
meals and everything in here. We're not going to part again, Marykins.
Not much!”
That maddening handicap beneath which the sweetest women trudge shackled
Mary, deluged this joy.
“Oh, Georgie!” she said; and again trembled, “Oh, Georgie!”
My impulsive George scented the damp. “Well?” he asked. “Well?
Whatever's--?”
“Oh, Georgie, you can't have a room here. We can't have all our meals
together here?”
He realised the trouble. He broke out: “Why ever not? Why ever--?”
“It wouldn't be _right_! Georgie, it _wouldn't_ be right!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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