Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/281

272 "Tell me what you would do,' replied Baxter reasonably, 'and I'll do it.'

"I don't know,' said Janet. 'But I would cut off my two hands rather than do nothing.'

"Baxter was fairly patient and certainly long-suffering, but he looked at things with the plain horse-sense of the male creature. 'What the plague good would that do?' he demanded warmly. 'I should be no sprier at opening doors without hands, and as far as ridiculous goes you certainly wouldn't be a cent more dignified with my hands hanging on to yours. Besides, how are you going to cut them off in the first place?'

"Janet shook her head dumbly. It was pretty nearly the only thing she could shake without feeling absurd.

Now if only we were engaged,' continued Baxter with a ghastly attempt at airiness, 'and the minister was coming to marry us, we might just stand up as we are and the thing would pass off as natural as could be.'

"The footsteps of three sounded on the path outside. Janet turned a bright and affectionate eye on the young man at her side. 'He is coming,' she said, and stood up."

"Is that the end of it?” demanded the itinerant photographer as the American millionaire rose to look out of the window.

"It is the artistic end," he replied. "They were married, of course, and lived happily ever afterwards."

"You don't say how they managed when it came to putting the ring on," remarked the second prison warder, with some dissatisfaction.

"That is one of the many details left to the imagination," replied the narrator good-humouredly. "I might add, however, that they put Janet's gum on the retail market under a fancy name and made a considerable fortune out of it."