That required perhaps half a dozen deep breaths. But, eventually, Darryl said: "Yeah. I'm sure."
"Okay, then." Tom turned his head, looking toward his wife and Melissa and Gayle Mason, who were politely sitting some distance away. Thereby, of course, allowing The Guys to conduct their affairs in the necessary privacy.
But Tom didn't give those three women more than a glance. All up-timers, all Americans, they'd have only the barest knowledge of how to handle the situation.
No, he needed Friedrich Bruch's wife, Nelly. She was not only a down-timer, but she'd been born and raised in London.
He was about to call out her name when he saw her emerge from the small room she shared with Friedrich.
"Nelly! Just the person I was looking for." He hooked a thumb at Darryl. "Our young swain here wants to know how a fellow goes about proposing to a girl, in the here and now."
Nelly smiled. Rita and Gayle grinned. Melissa looked to the heavens.
"Well, praise the Lord," she said.
Darryl scowled at her. "Melissa, you're a damn atheist."
Still looking at the ceiling, Melissa wagged her head back and forth. "True, been one since I was twelve. But maybe I should reconsider. Seeing as how I think I'm witnessing an act of divine intervention."
Several hours later, after Gayle took down all the radio messages relayed from Amsterdam that had come in during the evening window, she came into the main room with a big grin on her face.
"Speaking of divine intervention, you're all going to love this. Especially you, Rita." She held up a message in her hand, one of the little notepad sheets she used to record radio transmissions.
"What is it?" demanded Rita, rising from the divan and extending her hand.
"Tut, tut! It's not for you, dear, it's for your husband." Still grinning, Gayle came over and handed the message to Tom, who'd remained sitting.
Tom read it. Then read it again. Then, read it again.
"Well," Rita asked impatiently. "What?"
"It's from Mrs. Riddle." He reached up and started scratching his hair. " 'Bout the last thing I ever expected."
"The wife of the chief justice?" Melissa asked. "Why would she be sending you a radio message?"
"No, not her. Chuck Riddle's mother."
Rita nodded. "Mary Kat's grandma. She was a year ahead of me in high school. Mary Kat, that is. Not Veleda. What does she want?"
"Here, read it yourself. Better read it out loud, while you're at it."
Rita took the message and began reciting it so everyone could hear. By the time she got to the last few sentences, she was rushing.
tom. while you're there. episcopalians in grantville have no priest. should have a bishop too but that gets complicated. arrange to see archbishop laud. be ordained. as a priest if nothing else but shoot for bishop. am sure he can make an exception to the rules. best wishes. v riddle
"Ordained?" Rita's voice rose to a shriek. "Over my dead body!"
Melissa Mailey looked concerned. "Tom, you've never said anything about having a religious vocation."
"Well, I didn't have one." He cleared his throat. "Until now."
"You don't have one now!" Rita protested.
Tom settled back in the divan. He seemed to be struggling against a smile—or a grin as wide as the one still on Gayle's face.
"Yes, I do, dear. You read it yourself. I didn't have one two minutes ago, but I do now." He looked up at his very non-Episcopalian wife; the grin started to show around the edges of his still-solemn face. "You can't think of it—a vocation, I mean—as being something that's all inside you. It's like those bishops and things back in the early church, who wrapped their arms around a pillar of the church yelling, 'No. Not me!' while the congregation dragged them out to be promoted."
Melissa nodded, apparently quite solemnly. Rita just looked blank.
Tom continued, "Or, maybe like the prophets in the Old Testament who were just sitting there when the voice of God mucked up all their plans. Jonah, for instance. God said, 'Go there,' and he said, 'I don't think so, thank you very much,' so it took some persuading. A calling can come from outside, too."
There was no smile on Rita's face, for sure. "I wasn't born to be a preacher's wife," she hissed. "No. Tell her no. That's easy enough."
Tom went back to scratching his hair, lowering his face in the process. In that pose, the grin that was now spreading openly on his face made him look a bit like a weight-lifter shark, coming to the surface. "She does have a point, you know. That is, the Episcopalians in Grantville do need a priest, for sure, and we should really have a bishop."