"
"Well, if it is? We've got till three. I've arranged with the mandarin
chap for a quarter to three."
"I thought these things couldn't occur after two o'clock--by law."
"That's what's the matter with you," said Simeon; "you think too much.
The two o'clock law was altered years ago. Had anything to eat?" He was
helping Arthur with buttons.
"No."
"I expected not. Here! Swallow this whisky."
"Not I!" Arthur protested in a startled tone.
"Why not?"
"Because I shall have to kiss her after the ceremony."
"Bosh!" said Simeon. "Drink it. Besides, there's no kissing in a
Registry Office. You're thinking of a church. I wish you wouldn't think
so much. Here! Now the necktie, you cuckoo!"
In three minutes they were driving rapidly through the London mist
towards the other sex, and in a quarter of an hour there was one
bachelor the less in this vale of tears.
THE WIDOW OF THE BALCONY
I
They stood at the window of her boudoir in the new house which Stephen
Cheswardine had recently bought at Sneyd. The stars were pursuing their
orbits overhead in a clear dark velvet sky, except to the north, where
the industrial fires and smoke of the Five Towns had completely put them
out.
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