Maryland Independent

By Charles Frederick Wadsworth

In the supper room of the Embassy hotel, New Year's eve festivities were in full swing. At tables encircling the dancing floor, gay groups dined and made ready to welcome the New Year, and danced between courses to the music of the orchestra.

With a modernistic discord the band finished an encore fox trot, and Stanley Allen and Barbara Langford returned to their little table-for-two behind a potted palm in a secluded nook.

"Well," said Stanley in a business-like manner, "I suppose you have your schedule of new resolutions all made out and sworn to."

"Do you think I need to make any new resolutions?" This was asked archly, teasingly.

"I certainly do!" Stanley's reply was emphatic. "You have one very bad habit that irritates me beyond words. Without that, Babs, you would be absolutely perfect!"

"Thank you, kind sir," she said, Babs mocked. "And may I ask what that bad habit is that is devastating the whole countryside?"

"Don't pretend. You know well enough."

"Please verify, then."

"Now look here," Stanley said as he drew geometric figures with a pencil on the tablecloth. "During this current year which is about to come to a close, I have proposed to you just twenty-six times—an average of once every two weeks. Your bad habit is that you have refused me every time. You should do something about it."

"For every refusal, as you call it," Barbara reminded him, "there has been a proposal, which makes your habit just as bad as mine. In fact, worse, because you started yours first, and mine was a natural consequence."

"You mean unnatural consequence," Stanley corrected her.

"Well, anyway," Barbara argued, "if you will swear off your bad habit, I won't have to do anything about mine."

She glanced at him without raising her head, and the mischief that looked up through her long, curved lashes gave Stanley a little start.

Suddenly he said, "In the meantime, I move to lay the question on the table, to be taken up right after this dance."

He opened his arms to her as she arose.

"I second the motion," she said. "Carried."

About half way around the floor Stanley spoke into the little ear so close to his face. "Now you are just where you belong." His arm tightened just a little around her as he said it.

"Do you mean here at the Embassy?" More perverseness!

The orchestra stopped for intermission and the couple returned to their table.

Rapped lightly on the table. "The house will now come to order and we will take up the previous question. Once more, and for the last time this year, will you marry me, Babs?"

A soprano, singing the vocal interlude with piano accompaniment while the orchestra went out for a smoke, was singing "O Promise Me."

"There," approved Stanley, nodding toward the music platform. "Incidental music. Even the lady is trying to help me out!"

Barbara smiled, but turned pensive. The singer concluded her solo and began another.

"Yes," said Barbara slowly, "and she is trying to help me, too."

The second song was "I Surrender Dear."

Stanley reached over and gathered Barbara's hands into his own. "Do you really mean it? Are you saying 'Yes'?"

"Yes."

Stanley arose, glowing. "Come, let's go," he said. "This is no place for a newly-engaged couple."

A trip to the check room, then out under the canopy at the motor entrance. Stanley asked the footman to order his car.

As it came up they entered and the footman closed the door with a "Thank you, sir. A happy New Year!"

The chauffeur may have been listening, but being discreet, he never mentioned it. Anyway, had he been listening, and his hearing perceptive, he might have taken the sound of a kiss in the tonneau for a signal, for the long blue car rolled away into a wonderful New Year filled with golden promise for a young couple very much in love.

And as the car turned a corner there floated from the supper room of the Embassy the compelling waltz strains of "Kiss Me Again."

"More incidental music," said Stanley softly, and played up to it—completely.

1933. Western Newspaper Union.