As when he wrote poetry the grappling-hooks
of rhyme dragged him into statements he had not dreamed of at
the start and was afraid of at the finish--so now he stumbled into
a proposal he could not clamber out of. He must flounder through.
The idea was so deliriously unexpected, so fascinatingly novel to
Kedzie, that she fell in love with it. Immediately she would rather
have died than remain unmarried to Tommie Gilfoyle.
But there were difficulties.
CHAPTER II
In the good old idyllic days it had been possible for romantic
youth to get married as easily as to get dinner--and as hard to get
unmarried as to get wings. Couples who spooned too long at seaside
resorts and missed the last train home could wake up a preacher and
be united in indissoluble bonds of holy matrimony for two dollars.
The preachers of that day slept light, in order to save the
reputations of foolish virgins.
But now a greedy and impertinent civil government had stepped in
and sacrilegiously insisted on having a license bought and paid for
before the Church could officiate. And the license bureau was not
open all night, as it should have been.
Kedzie knew nothing of this, but Gilfoyle was informed. Theoretically
he believed that marriage should be rendered impossible and divorce
easy. But he could no more have proposed an informal alliance with
his precious Kedzie than he could have wished that his mother had
made one with his father. His mother and father had eloped and been
married by a sleepy preacher, but that was poetic and picturesque,
seeing that they did not fail to wake the preacher.
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