ive
years this had been his habit. At first it was the widow's cooking that
attracted him, then for a time the widow herself; but when from the
convent Claire came to assist her mother in the cafe, and when from a
lanky, big-eyed, long-legged child she grew into a slim, joyous, and
charming young woman, she alone was the attraction, and the Widower
Paillard decided to make her his wife. Other men had made the same
decision; and when it was announced that between Claire and the widower
a marriage had been "arranged," the clerks in the foreign commission
houses and the agents of the steamship lines drowned their sorrow in
rum and ran the house flags to half-staff. Paillard himself took the
proposed alliance calmly. He was not an impetuous suitor. With Widow
Ducrot he agreed that Claire was still too young to marry, and to
himself kept the fact that to remarry he was in no haste. In his mind
doubts still lingered. With a wife, young enough to be one of his
children, disorganizing, the routine of his villa, would it be any more
comfortable than he now found it? Would his eldest daughter and her
stepmother dwell together in harmony? The eldest daughter had assured
him that so far as she was concerned they would not; and, after all, in
marrying a girl, no matter how charming, without a dot, and the daughter
of a boarding-house keeper, no matter how respectable, was he not
disposing of himself too cheaply? These doubts assailed Papa Paillard;
these speculations were in his mind. And while he speculated Billy
acted.

"I know that in France," Billy assured Claire, "marriages are arranged
by the parents; but in my country they are arranged in heaven. And who
are we to disregard the edicts of heaven? Ages and ages ago, before the
flood, before Napoleon, even before old Paillard with his four children,
it was arranged in heaven that you were to marry me. So, what little
plans your good mother may make don't cut enough ice to cool a green
mint. Now, we can't try to get married here," continued Billy, "without
your mother and Paillard knowing it. In this town as many people have to
sign the marriage contract as signed our Declaration of Independence:
all the civil authorities, all the clergy, all the relatives; if every
man in the telephone book isn't a witness, the marriage doesn't 'take.'
So, we must elope!"

Having been brought up in a convent, where she was taught to obey
her mother and forbidden to think of marriage, Claire wa