as one likely to lead to a hasty marriage.
But he was sensitive about his stories, and she did not wish to hurt his
feelings.

"Let's get married first," she suggested, "and then I can BUY you a
magazine. We'll call it CARTER'S MAGAZINE and we will print nothing in
it but your stories. Then we can laugh at the editors!"

"Not half as loud as they will," said Carter.

With three thousand dollars in bank and three stories accepted and
seventeen still to hear from, and with Dolly daily telling him that it
was evident he did not love her, Carter decided they were ready, hand
in hand, to leap into the sea of matrimony. His interview on the subject
with Mrs. Ingram was most painful. It lasted during the time it took her
to walk out of her drawing-room to the foot of her staircase. She
spoke to herself, and the only words of which Carter was sure were
"preposterous" and "intolerable insolence." Later in the morning she
sent a note to his flat, forbidding him not only her daughter, but the
house in which her daughter lived, and even the use of the United States
mails and the New York telephone wires. She described his conduct in
words that, had they come from a man, would have afforded Carter every
excuse for violent exercise.

Immediately in the wake of the note arrived Dolly, in tears, and
carrying a dressing-case.

"I have left mother!" she announced. "And I have her car downstairs, and
a clergyman in it, unless he has run away. He doesn't want to marry us,
because he's afraid mother will stop supporting his flower mission. You
get your hat and take me where he can marry us. No mother can talk about
the man I love the way mother talked about you, and think I won't marry
him the same day!"

Carter, with her mother's handwriting still red before his eyes, and his
self-love shaken with rage flourished the letter.

"And no mother," he shouted, "can call ME a 'fortune-hunter' and a
'cradle-robber' and think I'll make good by marrying her daughter! Not
until she BEGS me to!"

Dolly swept toward him like a summer storm. Her eyes were wet and
flashing. "Until WHO begs you to?" she demanded. "WHO are you marrying;
mother or me?"

"If I marry you," cried Carter, frightened but also greatly excited,
"your mother won't give you a penny!"

"And that," taunted Dolly, perfectly aware that she was ridiculous, "is
why you won't marry me!"

For an instant, long enough to make her blush with shame and happiness,
Carter grinned