Page:Herbert Jenkins - Patricia Brent Spinster.djvu/47

 you couldn't be promoted from a major to a field-marshal in the course of a few days, could you?"

"Well, it's not usual," he confessed.

When the meal was over Bowen looked at his watch.

"I'm afraid it's too late for a show, it's a quarter to ten."

"A quarter to ten!" cried Patricia. "How the time has flown. I shall have to be going home."

He noticed preparations for a move at the Wangle table.

"Oh, please, don't hurry! Let's go upstairs and sit and smoke for a little time."

"Do you think I ought," enquired Patricia critically, her head on one side.

"Well," replied Bowen, "I think that you might safely do so as we are engaged," and that settled it.

They went upstairs, and it was a quarter to eleven before Patricia finally decided that she must make a move.

"Do you know," she said as she rose, "I am afraid I have enjoyed this most awfully; but oh! to-morrow morning."

"Shall you be tired?" he enquired.

"Tired!" she queried, "I shall be hot with shame. I shall not dare to look at myself in the glass. I—I—shall give myself a most awful time. For days I shall live in torture. You see I'm excited now and—and—you seem so nice, and you've been so awfully kind; but when I get