"I want you to meet Cousin Mary," he said.
They walked toward the end of the long parlor where Mary was sitting, but half way down the room they were stopped by Mrs. Putnam. She put both hands on Jimmy's shoulders, gave him a motherly kiss on one cheek, and sighed:
"Jimmy, you will be kind to my little girl?"
Jimmy looked from mother to daughter in dumb bewilderment. Certainly this was the most remarkable conduct he ever had dreamed of. Yet, Mrs. Putnam's smile was so affectionate and kind, her eyes met his with such a tender look that he intuitively felt that all was right as right should be. And yet--why should they act as they did?
Into the midst of his reflections burst Lucy's chum, Alice Jordan.
"I've a notion to kiss him, too!" she cried.
Jimmy stonily held himself in readiness to be kissed. If kissing went by favor he was pre-eminently a favored one. But Lucy clutched his arm with a pretty air of ownership and forbade Alice.
"Indeed, you will not. It wouldn't be good form now. After--afterward, you may. Just once. Isn't that right, Jimmy?"
"Perfectly," he replied, his mind still whirling in an effort to adjust actualities to his conception of what realities should be.
The four had formed a little group to themselves in the center of the parlor, Lucy clinging to Jimmy's arm, Mrs. Putnam eying them both with a happy expression, and Alice fluttering from one to the other, assuring them that they were the handsomest couple she ever had seen, that they ought to be proud of each other, and that Mrs. Putnam ought to be proud of them, and that she was sure nobody in all the world ever, ever could be as sublimely, beatifically happy as they would be, and that they must be sure to let her come to visit them.
"And," she cried, admiringly, stopping to pat Jimmy on his unclutched arm, "I just think your idea of proposing by telegraph was the brightest thing I ever heard of!"
It is to be written to the everlasting credit of James Trottingham Minton that he restrained himself from uttering the obvious remark on hearing this. Two words from him would have wrecked the house of cards. Instead, he blushed and smiled modestly. Slowly it was filtering into his brain that by some unusual, unexpected, unprecedented freak of fortune his difficulties had been overcome; that some way or other he had proposed and had been accepted.