NOW, Aleck, cash in!
--you've played the limit. You've got a job lot of four dukes
under the hammer; of four nationalities; all sound in the wind
and limb and pedigree, all bankrupt and in debt up to the ears.
They come high, but we can afford it. Come, Aleck, don't delay
any longer, don't keep up the suspense: take the whole lay-out,
and leave the girls to choose!"
Aleck had been smiling blandly and contentedly all through this
arraignment of her marriage policy, a pleasant light, as of triumph
with perhaps a nice surprise peeping out through it, rose in her eyes,
and she said, as calmly as she could:
"Sally, what would you say to--ROYALTY?"
Prodigious! Poor man, it knocked him silly, and he fell over the
garboard-strake and barked his shin on the cat-heads. He was dizzy
for a moment, then he gathered himself up and limped over and sat
down by his wife and beamed his old-time admiration and affection
upon her in floods, out of his bleary eyes.
"By George!" he said, fervently, "Aleck, you ARE great--the greatest
woman in the whole earth! I can't ever learn the whole size of you.
I can't ever learn the immeasurable deeps of you. Here I've been
considering myself qualified to criticize your game. _I!_ Why,
if I had stopped to think, I'd have known you had a lone hand up
your sleeve. Now, dear heart, I'm all red-hot impatience--tell me
about it!"
The flattered and happy woman put her lips to his ear and whispered
a princely name.
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