In the following story the writer’s father broke an important date when he was young. How did it happen? Read the story and find the answer.

    It happened in one of those colourful Danish inns which offer service specially for tourists and where English is spoken. I was with my father on a business-and-pleasure trip, and in our leisure hours we were having a wonderful time.

    “I wish Mother were here,” said I.

    “If your mother had come with us,” said Father, “it would have been wonderful to show her around.”

    He had visited Denmark when he was a young man. I asked him, “How long is it since you were here?”

    “Oh, about thirty years. I remember being in this very inn, by the way.” He looked around, remembering. “Those were pleasant and enjoyable days…” He stopped suddenly, and I saw that his face was pale. I followed his eyes and looked across the room to a woman who was setting a tray of drink before some customers. She might have been pretty once, but now she was stout and her hair was untidy. “Do you know her?” I asked.

    “I did once.” he said.

    The woman came to our table. “Drinks?” she asked.

    “We’ll have beer,” I said. She nodded and went away.

    “How she has changed! Thank heaven she didn’t recognize me,” father said in a low voice, mopping his face with a handkerchief. “I knew her before I met your mother,” he went on. “I was a student, on a tour. She was a lovely young thing, very graceful. I fell madly in love with her, and she with me.”

    “Does Mother know about her?” I said suddenly, without thinking.

    “Of course,” Father said gently. He looked at me a little anxiously. I felt embarrassed for him.

    I said, “Dad, you don’t have to…”

    “Your mother would tell you if she were here. I don’t want you wondering about this. I was a foreigner to her family. I was dependent on my father. If she had married me, she wouldn’t have had any prospects. So her father objected to our romance. When I wrote to my father that I wanted to get married he cut off my allowance. And I had to go home. But I met the girl once more, and told her I would return to America, borrow enough money to get married on, and come back for her in a few months.”

    “We knew,” he continued, “that her father might stop and seize our letter, so we agreed that I would simply mail her a slip of paper with a date on it, the time she was to meet me at a certain place; then we’d get married. Well, I went home, got the loan and sent her the date. She received the note. She wrote me: ‘I’ll be there.’ But she wasn’t. Then I found that she had been married about tow weeks before, to a local innkeeper. She hadn’t waited.”

    Then my father said, “Thank God she didn’t. I went home, met your mother, and we’ve been completely happy. We often joke about that youthful love romance. I suggest that one day you write a story about it.”

    The woman appeared with our beer.

    “You are from America?” she asked me.

    “Yes,” I said.

    She smiled happily, “A wonderful country, America.”

    “Yes, a lot of your countrymen have gone there. Did you ever think of it?”

    “Not me. Not now,” she said. “I thought so one time, a long time ago. But I stayed here. It’s much better here.”

    We drank our beer and left. Outside I said, “Father, just how did you write that date on which she was to meet you?”

    He stopped, took out an envelope and wrote on it. “Like this,” he said. “12/11/13, which was, of course, December 11, 1913.”

    “No!” I exclaimed. “It isn’t in Denmark or any European country. Over here they write the day first, then the month. So that date wouldn’t be December 11 but the 12th of November!”

    Father passed his hand over his face. “So she was there!” he exclaimed, “and it was because I didn’t show up that she got married.” He was silent a while. “Well,” he said, “I hope she’s happy. She seems to be.”

    As we resumed walking I said, “It’s a lucky thing it happened that way. You wouldn’t have met Mother.”

    He put his arm around my shoulders, looked at me with a heartwarming smile, and said, “I was doubly lucky, young fellow, for otherwise I wouldn’t have met you, either!”

Simplified from Reader’s Digest, 1975.

Approximately 740 words.