with excitement, her cheeks burning.

"Can we? What's to prevent? Will you do it, Grace--will you?" cried he.

"What will everybody say?"

"Let 'em say. What do we care? Won't it be the greatest lark that ever
happened? You're the smartest woman in the world for thinking of it."

"But I wasn't in earnest," she protested.

"But you are now--we both are. Listen: We can slip away and get married
and nobody will be the wiser and then, when we come back, we can laugh
at everybody."

"And get our pictures in the papers."

"Then, by Hokey! we won't come back for five years! How's that? That'll
fool 'em, won't it? Say, this is great! Life is worth living after all.
You'll go, won't you, Grace?"

"I'd go to the end of the world with you, Hugh, but--"

"Oh, say you'll go! Now, listen to this," he urged, leaping to his feet.
"We're going to be married anyway. We love one another. You can't be
married until the twenty-third of May. Lots of people elope--even in the
best of families. Why shouldn't we? If we stay here, we'll have to face
all the sort of thing we don't like--"

"Yes, but it won't take us two months to elope," she protested. "Sh!