"That doesn't matter," rejoined Lucy, with the cleverness of a woman.
"She can manage to bring the marriage about. Besides, I want to break
with the old life here, and begin quite a new one with you. When I
am your wife and Mrs. Jasher is my step-father's, everything will be
capitally arranged."
"Well, I hope so," said Archie heartily, "for I want you all to myself
and have no desire to share you with anyone else. But I say," he glanced
at his watch; "it is getting towards nine o'clock, and I am desperately
hungry. Can't we go to dinner?"
"Not until Mrs. Jasher arrives," said Lucy primly.
"Oh, bother--!"
Hope, being quite exasperated with hunger, would have launched out into
a speech condemning the widow's unpunctuality, when in the hall below
the drawing-room was heard the sound of the door opening and closing.
Without doubt this was Mrs. Jasher arriving at last, and Lucy ran out
of the room and down the stairs to welcome her in her eagerness to get
Archie seated at the dinner table. The young man lingered by the open
door of the drawing-room, ready to welcome the widow, when he heard Lucy
utter an exclamation of surprise and became aware that she was ascending
the stairs along with Professor Braddock. At once he reflected there
would be trouble, since he was in the house with Lucy, and lacked the
necessary chaperon which Braddock's primitive Anglo-Saxon instincts
insisted upon.
"I did not know you were returning to-night," Lucy was saying when she
re-entered the drawing-room with her step-father.
"I arrived by the six o'clock train," explained the Professor, unwinding
a large red scarf from his neck, and struggling out of his overcoat with
the assistance of his daughter. "Ha, Hope, good evening."
"Where have you been since?" asked Lucy, throwing the Professor's coat
and wraps on to a chair.
"With Mrs. Jasher," said Braddock, warming his plump hands at the fire.
"So you must blame me that she is not here to preside at dinner as the
chaperon of you young people."
Lucy and her lover glanced at one another in surprise. This light and
airy tone was a new one for the Professor to take. Instead of being
angry, he seemed to be unusually gay, and looked at them in quite a
jocular manner for a dry-as-dust scientist.
"We waited dinner for her, father," ventured Lucy timidly.
"Then I am ready to eat it," announced Braddock. "I am extremely hungry,
my dear. I can't live on love, you know."
"Live on love?" Lucy stared, and Archie laughed quietly.
"Oh yes, you may smile and look astonished;" went on the Professor
good-humoredly, "but science does not destroy the primeval instincts
entirely. Lucy, my dear," he took her hand and patted it, "while in
London and in lodgings, it was borne in upon me forcibly how lonely I
was and how lonely I would be when you married our young friend yonder.
I had intended to come down to-morrow, but to-night, such was my feeling
of loneliness that I considered favorably your idea that I should find a
second helpmate in Mrs. Jasher. I have always had a profound admiration
for that lady, and so--on the spur of the moment, as I may say--I
decided to come down this evening and propose."