"I've only come in for a minute, Mrs. Whittaker," he said. "I must be off home, because I've got to be up awfully early in the morning. I made half-a-dozen business appointments for to-morrow ever so early, before I knew that Maudie and I would quite come to an understanding to-night. May I come to-morrow evening?" "You may come whenever you like," said Regina. "You had better begin, Harry, as you mean to go on. I have no son of my own, and the young men who take my girls away from me must not think they are going to rob me of my daughters--on the contrary, they must make me forget that I never had sons." "I shall be very willing to do that," Harry Marksby returned. "I've always managed to get on with my own mother all right, and I don't see why I shouldn't get on with my mother-in-law. It won't be my fault if I don't." "I'm sure it won't be mine," said Regina. "No, I'm sure it won't," said he heartily. "Well, good-night, Mrs. Whittaker." He bent down and kissed her just as frankly as if she had been his own mother, and Regina choked a little as the boy and girl went out of the room together. In a couple of minutes or so Maudie came back, came in with quite a rush for one of her quiet nature, and flung herself down at her mother's feet. "I am so happy, mother dear," she said. "You have been happy in your married life, and you can understand what I feel. To-morrow will be a great day for me. I'm going to meet Harry in Bond Street at four o'clock, and we're going to choose our ring together; and after that I'm going right down to the city with him, and I'm going to have my tea at one of the Bundaby shops. I always did think I should like to keep a shop mother," she went on, "you have heard me say so lots of times, but I never thought that I should one day be at the head of at least thirty!" CHAPTER XIII DETAILS The young rush along the pathway of life cheerfully surmounting or overturning every obstacle, while their more cautious elders look on aghast at their nerve. When once Harry Marksby had taken the plunge and was accepted as a lover of Maudie's, he was determined not to let the grass grow under his feet. May was then about three parts over, and Harry insisted that the wedding should be, as he called it, "pulled off" before the end of July. "But why this hurry?" asked Regina, who, in spite of her modernity, still retained some traces of her aboriginal ways of thought. "No hurry at all; but why waste time, Mrs. Whittaker?" said Harry. "What is there to wait for? We have plenty of money. I always go away for August, and, for an occasion like this, my father won't think anything of it if I take a good share of September too. A man only gets married now and again, you know." "But why not leave it till the autumn?"