ll, you know, the voyage only takes eight days."

"I've forgotten where I was."

"You were saying what a devil of a chap she thought you. What happened?
I suppose, when you actually came to propose, you found she was engaged
to some other johnny?"

"Not at all! I asked her to be my wife and she consented. We both agreed
that a quiet wedding was what we wanted--she thought her father might
stop the thing if he knew, and I was dashed sure my mother would--so we
decided to get married without telling anybody. By now," said Eustace,
with a morose glance at the porthole, "I ought to have been on my
honeymoon. Everything was settled. I had the licence and the parson's
fee. I had been breaking in a new tie for the wedding."

"And then you quarrelled?"

"Nothing of the kind. I wish you would stop trying to tell me the story.
I'm telling _you_. What happened was this: somehow--I can't make out
how--mother found out. And then, of course, it was all over. She stopped
the thing."

Sam was indignant. He thoroughly disliked his Aunt Adeline, and his
cousin's meek subservience to her revolted him.

"Stopped it? I suppose she said 'Now, Eustace, you mustn't!' and you
said 'Very well, mother!' and scratched the fixture?"

"She didn't say a word. She never has said a word. As far as that goes,
she might never have heard anything about the marriage."

"Then how do you mean she stopped it?"

"She pinched my trousers!"

"Pinched your trousers!"

Eustace groaned. "All of them! The whole bally lot! She gets up long
before I do, and she must have come into my room and cleaned it out
while I was asleep. When I woke up and started to dress, I couldn't find
a single damned pair of bags in the whole place. I looked everywhere.
Finally, I went into the sitting-room where she was writing letters and
asked if she had happened to see any anywhere. She said she had sent
them all to be pressed. She said she knew I never went out in the
mornings--I don't as a rule--and they would be back at lunch-time. A fat
lot of use that was! I had to be at the church at eleven. Well, I told
her I had a most important engagement with a man at eleven, and she
wanted to know what it was, and I tried to think of something, but it
sounded pretty feeble, and she said I had better telephone to the man
and put it off. I did it, too. Rang up the first number in the book and
told some fellow I had never seen in my life that I couldn't meet him
because I hadn't a