In order to square it all up for Edith, we must be able to say to these people that we haven't been frivolling--that we are going to be married at once.

That will let Edith out of the difficulty, and everything will look rosy at the outset.

If we put it off, the world will have said things in its ignorance that she can never refute, simply because the world doesn't stop long enough to hear two sides of a story unless they are given pretty closely together.

Now Edith is counting on us to put the peeping-Tom Rodneys and the charitable Carneys to rout with our own little bombshell.

They're saying nasty things about all of us.