“Thurley, dearest,” he began, sitting down and kissing her, “I thought four o’clock would never come.”
“Did you make mistakes in change?” She put her hand on his shoulder. “If the clerks could see their lord and master now,” and she rumpled up his hair.
“Bother the clerks and the whole darned town—I’ve made you promise to marry me, Thurley, and you’re not going to make me keep it a secret. Why don’t we tell every one right away? What’s the use of keeping it to ourselves, when we are both sure of ourselves and the happiest things alive?”
Thurley laughed indulgently. “It’s just me, Dan. I want to be terribly sure of myself.”
He took her hands in his. “You are! You love me. You’ve always cared for me, as I have for you—’way back ten years ago when you joined the gang! I have all the money we need and you may have it all. Say we won’t keep it a secret! I’m dead tired of the Hotel Button; it gets on my nerves these days. Mrs. Hawkins has been mighty white to me—when I know what a spoiled nuisance I must have been—but she’s a perfect litany of woe. I can hear her now, ‘Wal, there wuz two funerals down to South Wales to-day—an’ I meant to make a lemon pie but there wuz no lemons!’ Or else she gets on another tactic—of borrowers—and she greets a chap with, ‘Don’t never talk about borrowers, Dan Birge; my curtain frames has been as far as the next township, and sometimes I ain’t set eyes on my ice cream freezer from May to November!’ And if I’m trying extra hard to think about business—and I’m really thinking about you—she starts in about somebody’s second cousin’s divorce and soliloquizes, ‘We’re all members of one human family and God never meant for man and wife to live together like cat and dog.’ And I’ve never known it to fail that I was hurrying to get away to meet some one—and it was ’most always you—that she didn’t drag me into her sitting room to see some of her damned—excuse me, Thurley—embroidery that she’s going stone blind by doing and listen to her explain, ‘These two doilies is just alike, only one is blue with flowers and the other is pink with stars and anchors—they’re a weddin’ present for Mrs. P. L. Flanigan—her second wedding, too; she’s been on the stage since she could lisp, supported Madame Modjeska all through the West and then married a no good Irish comedian.... Oh, Dan, don’t be in a hurry! Look at this one—ain’t it a work of art, if I do say so—clover is like sweet peas, awful hard to embroider natural.’”