Her aunt pursed up her lips and said, “This is dreadful!” but as Elsie refused to fall into the trap of asking what was dreadful, she could not follow it up in any way, except by telling Mary, the parlour-maid, to show Mr. Gubbins, when he arrived, into her dead husband’s study. The study of a dead clergyman is not usually an invigorating spot. Aunt Anne was a massive lady and she sat between Peter and the door. All the windows were closed as if on purpose. Even if Peter had had the courage to try to escape it would have been very difficult. You cannot get out of dead people’s rooms briskly without appearing heartless; besides he had not the courage. Peter was not as surprised at Aunt Anne’s attitude as Elsie would have been, but he was more frightened. He saw in Aunt Anne’s eye that matrimony had fallen upon him like a bolt from the blue. You cannot put bolts back into the blue when they have fallen, and you could not dislodge the idea of matrimony from Aunt Anne’s mind once it had taken root there. If young people would go to oratorios together they ought to be married—she saw that quite plainly, even without the lawless journey at the other end, which made the prospect, as she explained to Peter, “simply compulsory.” “You see,” she explained, “Elsie arrived here literally without a tooth-brush—need I say more?” Peter assured her that there really was no need. It contained the case against them in a nutshell. On the whole he was not averse to being frightened into marriage with Elsie. One or two things had to be made perfectly plain before he would consent to it. One was that they should not go back to Little Ticklington on any account, and the other that the marriage should take place as quietly as possible without wedding guests. They might have relatives, but not friends. It was all terribly uncertain and disintegrating, but it was not as terrible as having to face Onoria. Peter’s own plan had been the idea of going abroad alone, assisted by Thomas Cook. Of course it was a very dangerous plan, open to obvious disasters at practically every turn, still Cook’s was a most reliable agency, and many people had been known to return alive from trips to the Continent. He could take a hot water bottle, Keating’s, and a small medicine chest. But marriage would be less complicated, and it would have the advantage of including Elsie. Peter proposed to Elsie quite easily. He simply said, “On the whole, I think the best way out for both of us is to be married. For a long time I have been feeling Little Ticklington too restricted for me mentally. One needs to be nearer the great pulse of life—not too near, of course! I thought somewhere in the suburbs—Chiswick, for instance—there are some nice little houses in that direction, or Turnham Green.