England -- Fiction; Honeymoons -- Fiction; Love stories; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Voyages and travels -- Fiction
"I want some sweets," said Edward, and was directed to "the third shop
on the left, through there."
It was not till two weeks later that a satined and beribboned box of
sweets arrived by post for Miss Moore. "From Mary," said the legend
within, and the postmark was Warwick. Mr. Basingstoke counted on every
one's having at least one relation or friend bearing that commonest and
most lovely of all names. And he was right. A distant cousin got the
credit of the gift, which made the little apprentice happy for a day and
interested for a week--exactly as Mr. Basingstoke had intended. His
imagination pleased him with the picture of the sudden surprise of a
gift, in that drab and subordinated life. By such simple means Mr.
Basingstoke added enormously to his own agreeable sensations. And by
such little exercises of memory as that which registered Miss Moore's
name and the address of the shop he made those pleasures possible for
himself. The sweets he bought on that first day of his elopement went to
his nurse. He might have added more gifts, for the pleasure of spending
money was still as new as nice, but the voice of Charles without drew
him from the shop to settle a difference of opinion between that
tethered dog and the chauffeur.
"Wanted to hang hisself over the side of the car," the man explained,
"and no loss to his mourning relations, if you ask me," he added,
sourly.
Edward had hardly adjusted the situation before she came out--and he
felt the sight of her was worth waiting for. She wore now a white coat
with touches of black velvet, and the hat was white, too, with black and
a pink rose or two.
"It looks more like Bond Street than Peckham," he said as she got in.
"It surpasses my wildest dreams."
"I had to make them trim it," she said, "that's why I was such ages. All
the ones they had were like Madge Wildfire--insane, wild, unrelated
feathers and bows born in Bedlam."
Her eyes, under the brim of the new hat, thrilled him, and when Charles,
leaping on her lap, knocked the hat crooked, scattered the mound of
parcels, and made rosetted dust-marks on the new cloak, her reception of
these clumsy advances would have endeared her to any one to whom she was
not already dear.
"Well," she said, tucking Charles in between them, setting the hat
straight, and dusting the coat, all in one competent movement, "have you
had time yet to think what you're going to do with me?"
"I have had time," he said, rearranging the mound.
"I'm so sorry I was so long, but. . . ."
"It was worth it," he said, looking at the hat. "Well, what I propose is
that you should go, not to Claridge's, which is just the place where
your relations will look for you, but to one of those large, comfortable
hotels where strictly middle-class people stay when they come up to
London on matters connected with their shops or their farms. I will give
you as long as you like to unpack your new portmanteau and your parcels.
Then I'll call for you and take you out to dinner."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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