FullReads

“Set right down,” said the genial sarsaparilla man, and to further promote good feeling he tendered his remaining “Ruby Mandeville” cigar.

“Your friend,” said he affably, “does he always wear them goggles?”

“Always,” answered Hawley. “Eats in them, sleeps in them.”

“Born in them,” supplemented Mead savagely.

They sat and waited for yet a few moments, and though Mead did not add geniality to the conversation, he certainly contributed interest to it. For his views on honeymoon etiquette being strong within him, and an audience made to his hand, he went on to amplify some of the theories with which he had been trying to undermine Winthrop’s loyalty.

“I am persuaded that most of the disappointments of married life are due to the impossible standards set up at the beginning. Look at it this way. You know the fuss most wives make about the hours a husband keeps. Well! suppose Mr. Hawley comes out in the car with me to-night. I know some fellows who have a summer studio near here. We’ll run over and make a night of it.”

“Say,” the molasses gentleman broke in, “be you married, mister?”

“No!” said Mead.

“Sounds like it,” said the molasses gentleman. “Marriage will sort of straighten you out on these here subjects.”

“Oh, leave ’em be,” admonished the sarsaparilla man. “If I had ‘a met up with him thirty years ago, mebbee I wouldn’t be in the traveling line now. He’s got a fine idee.”

Hawley, meanwhile, was wrestling with his manners and the “Ruby Mandeville,” until the lady, as was her custom, triumphed.

He hurriedly and incompletely extinguished the cigar, and attracted by the same opportunity for concealment which had appealed to Kate and Patty, he lifted a corner of the heavy-fringed tablecover and sent Ruby to join the other ladies.

Now, a lighted cigar applied suddenly to the ear of an excited and half-hysterical conspirator, will generally produce results. In this case it produced a scream, the bride, and after an interval, the shrouded confidential friend.

“See where amazement on your mother sits,” the ghost remarks in Hamlet, but amazement never sat so hard on the wicked Gertrude of Denmark as it did upon the four men who saw the tablecloth give up its ghosts.

At first there was silence. One of those throbbing, abominable silences whose every second makes a situation worse and explanation more impossible.

The “Black Crook” speech of welcome and appreciation died in the heart of the molasses traveler. It did not somehow seem the safest answer to Hawley’s threatening–

“I think you gentlemen had better explain how you happen to be in my private sitting-room. Perhaps we had better step out into the hall.”

They did, and the echoes of their conversation brought Jimmie, that trusty sleuth, upon the scene. With him he brought Horace as witness. Also, he carried his dark lantern. He directed its glare fitfully at the two strangers until Mead, catching a beam in his eye, turned and drove Jimmie and his cohorts from the scene. They retreated in exceedingly bad order to the bar, and then Jimmie announced in sepulchral whispers that he had further identification to impart. He required much liquid refreshment to nerve him to speech, and his audience required to be similarly strengthened to hear.

“I’ve got ’em,” he began, “I know ’em now. Horace, this is the biggest thing you’ll ever be anywhere near.” And, as his hearers drew close about him, he whispered “counterfeiters. The hull kit and bilin’ of ’em.”

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Kate and Patty wrestled afresh with the automobile veil, and had succeeded in getting it tied in a limp string around the bridesmaid’s neck, leaving all her head and face uncovered. And when the groom and the groomsman returned she, with a muffled gurgle, dived back into the seclusion of the tablecover.

“We’ve got rid of those bounders,” Hawley announced, and–