witchery of Lurana's voice and eyes—I should have said precisely the same. "Dearest Theodore!" she murmured, "I never really doubted you. I felt so sure that you would be nice and sympathetic about it. If we couldn't agree about such a trifling thing as where we are to be married, we should be unsuited to one another, shouldn't we? Now we will just walk round the square once more, and then go in and tell the others what we have arranged." They had sat down to supper when we entered, and the Professor cast a glance of keen inquiry through his spectacles at us, over the cold beef and pickles with which he was recruiting his energies after "Hiawatha." [Pg 30] [Pg 30] "Yes, papa," said Lurana, calmly, "we are a little late; but Theodore has been asking me to marry him, and I have said I would." There was an outburst of congratulations from Miss Rakestraw and Chuck. Old Polkinghorne thought fit to conceal his joy under a cloak of stagey emotion. "Well, well," he said, "it is Nature's law; the young birds spread their wings and quit the warm nest, and the old ones are left to sit and brood over the past. I cannot blame you, child. As for you, my boy," he added, extending a flabby hand to me, "all I can say is, there is no one to whom I would so willingly surrender her." There was scarcely any one to whom, in my opinion, he would not surrender her with the utmost alacrity, for, as I have already hinted, Lurana, with all her irresistible fascination, had a temper of her own, and was apt to make the parental nest a trifle too warm for the elder bird occasionally. [Pg 31] [Pg 31] "Yes, papa, we are a little late." [Pg 32] [Pg 32] "And when am I to lose my sunbeam?" he asked. "Not just yet?" "Theodore wishes to have the marriage as soon as possible," said Lurana, "by special licence."
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