know what I mean.

Now during the Christmas holidays of 1919 there took place in Toledo,
counting only the people with the italicized _the_, forty-one
dinner parties, sixteen dances, six luncheons, male and female, twelve
teas, four stag dinners, two weddings, and thirteen bridge parties. It
was the cumulative effect of all this that moved Perry Parkhurst on
the twenty-ninth day of December to a decision.

This Medill girl would marry him and she wouldn't marry him. She was
having such a good time that she hated to take such a definite step.
Meanwhile, their secret engagement had got so long that it seemed as
if any day it might break off of its own weight. A little man named
Warburton, who knew it all, persuaded Perry to superman her, to get a
marriage license and go up to the Medill house and tell her she'd have
to marry him at once or call it off forever. So he presented himself,
his heart, his license, and his ultimatum, and within five minutes
they were in the midst of a violent quarrel, a burst of sporadic open
fighting such as occurs near the end of all long wars and engagements.
It brought about one of those ghastly lapses in which two people who
are in love pull up sharp, look at each other coolly and think it's
all been a mistake. Afterward they usually kiss wholesomely and assure
the other person it was all their fault. Say it all was my fault! Say
it was! I want to hear you say it!

But while reconciliation was trembling in the air, while each was, in
a measure, stalling it off, so that they might the more voluptuously
and sentimentally enjoy it when it came, they were permanently
interrupted by a twenty-minute phone call for Betty from a garrulous
aunt. At the end of eighteen minutes Perry Parkhurst, urged on by