Page:The time spirit; a romantic tale (IA timespiritromant00snaiiala).pdf/150

 "Get along with you!" said Joe sternly, but in spite of himself he couldn't help laughing.

"I'll leave you and Mr. Dinneford to have a little crack while I take this to my mumsie." Brandishing an important-looking milliner's box, she left the room in a laughing search of Eliza.

As soon as Jack found himself alone with Mary's father a period of constraint ensued. It would have been wrong to deny that his reception had been the reverse of cordial. The sensitiveness of a lover, in duty bound to walk delicately, made no secret of that. Moreover, he was still so astonished at Mary's paternity that he felt quite at a loss. Nature had played an amazing trick. Somehow this serio-comic London copper in half-mufti, was going to make it very difficult to exercise the deference due to a prospective father-in-law.

An acute silence was terminated by Joe's "Won't you sit down, sir?"

Jack sat down; and then Mary's father, torn between stern disapproval and the humane feelings of a host, invited the young man solemnly to a glass of beer.

"Thank you very much," said Jack, with admirable gravity.

Murmuring "excuse me a minute," Joe went to draw the beer. Left alone the young man tried to arrange his thoughts; also he took further stock of his surroundings. He had yet to overcome a powerful feeling of surprise. It was hard to believe that Princess Bedalia, in the view of her fiancé, the very last word in modern young women, should have sprung from such a milieu as Number Five, Beaconsfield Villas. It was a facer. Yet somehow the chasm between Mary and her male