"Rodney, you'll give me at once a written promise of marriage, or I'll communicate with Inspector Harlow, and in the morning you'll be charged with murder."
"Do you wish me to suppose that you are speaking seriously?"
"We'll be married at a registrar's--it doesn't matter where, so long as we are married, and at a registrar's it's quickest. You can get a licence for £2 3s. 6d.; I'll get it, I've enough money for that, and then the day after you can be married. If I get the licence to-morrow we can be married on Thursday--and we will."
"We can be married on Thursday, can we, you and I? This sounds like comic opera, and, as the song says, 'When we are married, what shall we do?'"
"You can do as you please. I shall have my marriage lines, and that's all I care about."
"So you propose to haul me to the registrar, and chain me to you, and souse me in the gutter, and ruin my career, and render life not worth living, not because you've any special ambition for yourself, nor even because you crave for the sweets of my society, but in order that you may have somewhere locked up in a drawer what you call your marriage lines. This seems to me like using a steam hammer to crack a nut."
"I've got a sheet of paper; you sit down and write what I tell you."
She laid on the table a sheet of paper which she had taken out of her blouse. As he looked at it he laughed.
"Stamped--a sixpenny stamp, as I'm a sinner! Do you know, my dear, that this is a bill form which you've got here, good for any amount up to fifty pounds. Wherever did you get the thing? And what use do you suppose it is to you? What a practical-minded child it is! And I never guessed it till now! Tis a wonderful world that we live in!"
He took a fountain pen and a blotting pad from a table at the side, and spread out on the latter the crumpled bill stamp.
"Here we are. Now for the writing. 'Three months after date I promise to pay.' Is that the sort of thing I'm to write?"
"Write: 'I, Rodney Elmore, promise to marry on Thursday next Mabel Joyce, who is about to bear a child of which I am the father.' Have you got that? Why aren't you writing?"
"Before I start I want to see the finish; that is, I want to know all that I am to write."