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course,” he answered at once.
    Her horrified expression made him lean hastily towards her and seize her hands, gripping them hard, while his expression softened miraculously. His voice, too, was suddenly gentle.
    “My dear child, what a little idiot you are! ” he told her. “And why do you worry your head over such improbable situations? If you and I marry, we will stay married—at least you can be assured of that! And I think, looking at it from every angle, the only sensible thing we can do is to get married. That is if you don’ t seriously object to linking your future with mine?”
    She looked up at him then, and her clear eyes reassured him. “Oh, no, I don’ t! ”
    “And I certainly don’ t! ”
    “You don’t think I ought to—to earn my own living? To stand on my own feet?”
    He looked down at them, in their smart new shoes. “They’re rather small and slightly inadequate feet! ”
    Carol looked almost relieved. She was still thinking of her dream.
    “And your sister isn’t likely to object?”
    “Why on earth should she?” Timothy Carrington demanded. “It’s nothing to do with her.”
    Carol gave a little sigh, like a sigh of resignation.
    “In that case—” she began. “In that case—”
    “In that case I take it that I’m accepted?” Timothy murmured, and rewarded her with a small smile. He patted her hands, where they rested in her lap. “And now we can consider ourselves engaged, and I’ ll find out how soon we can get married. It may involve such a thing as a special license, and as you’ re a minor someone may have to give their permission. It is just possible that the permission of a magistrate may be necessary, but that’s what we’ve got to find out.”
    “Yes,” she agreed, feeling as if she was being whirled into something quite extraordinary.
    He looked down at her, and his smile became touched with sympathy.
    “This is all rather sudden, isn’t it?” he said. “But you’ll get used to the idea.”
    “Will I?” she murmured, and for an instant he hoped that he was doing the right thing—from her point of view. But one could never tell, and she was very young.
    CHAPTER SIX
    “I think that’s everything,” said Meg Carrington, consulting her list of ‘things to be done’ and ticking off each item before she dismissed it. “Flowers in vases, drawers re-lined, wardrobes thoroughly dusted inside, and polished outside—all furniture given final polish. Yes! I don’t think there’s anything we’ve forgotten, unless it’s those floral curtains.... I was going to change them and the bed coverlet for some peach moire silk, but on the whole I think flowered ones go better with this room and the mahogany furniture, especially the tiny pink rosebuds and the little violet sprays. They do somehow suggest youth and inexperience—one’s conventional idea of a bride ... ”
    “Doesn’t seem real to me,” Agatha Hill declared, attacking the shining oval dressing-table mirror with her yellow duster, and giving it an extra polish. “Those horrible blow flies settle in a moment!—the beastly things!... But Mr. Timothy married!—I just can’ t realize it, I can’ t really! I never thought he was cut out for that sort of thing, somehow.”
    “Neither did I,” Meg Carrington admitted very quietly, with a faint sigh in the words. “But there! These things happen, and men are not like women! ”
    She thrust back the nose of the over-inquisitive golden spaniel who was about to jump up on to the old-fashioned four-poster bed.
    “Behave yourself, Kate! Your paws are probably muddy, and that’s a clean counterpane.”
    She looked round the room again with a searching, careful glance.
    “Well, Aggie, I think we might as well go downstairs now, since there doesn’t appear to be anything more to be done. You’ ve made up the master’ s bed, haven’ t you, and seen that everything’s all right in his room? I don’t suppose he’ll sleep there tonight,