Part 36 (1/2)

”Did he?” says Sadie. ”I wouldn't have thought it of Pinckney. Well, just to show him that he was wrong, I would put this affair off until you can have a regular church wedding; with invitations, and ushers, and pretty flower girls. And you ought to have a gray-silk wedding-gown--you'd look perfectly stunning in gray silk, you know.

Wouldn't all that be much nicer than running off like this, as though you were ashamed of something?”

Say, it was a slick game of talk that Sadie handed out then, for she was playin' for time. But Aunt Tillie was no come-on.

”Mulli doesn't want to wait another day,” says she, ”and neither do I, so that settles it. And here comes the rector, now.”

”Looks like we'd played out our hand, don't it?” I whispered to Sadie.

”Wait!” says she. ”I want to get a good look at the man.”

He was trailin' along after the minister, and it wa'n't until he was within six feet of me that I saw who it was.

”h.e.l.lo, Doc!” says I. ”So you're the dear Mulli, are you?”

He near jumped through his collar, Pinphoodle did, when he gets his lamps on me. It only lasted a minute, though, for he was a quick recoverer.

”Why, professor!” says he. ”This is an unexpected pleasure.”

”I guess some of that's right,” says I.

And say, but he was dressed for the joyful bridegroom part--striped trousers, frock coat, white puff tie, and white gloves! He'd had a close shave and a shampoo, and the ma.s.sage artist had rubbed out some of the swellin' from under his eyes. Didn't look much like the has-been that done the dive under the couch at the Studio.

”Well, well!” says I. ”This is where the private cinch comes in, eh?

Doc, you've got a head like a horse.”

”I should think he'd be ashamed of himself,” says Sadie, ”running off with a silly old woman who might be his mother.”

The Sullivan temper had got the best of her. After that the deep lard was all over the cook stove. Aunt Tillie throws four cat-fits to the minute, and lets loose on Sadie with all kinds of polite jabs that she can lay her tongue to. Then Doc steps up, puts a manly arm half-way round her belt line, and lets her weep on the silk facing of his Sunday coat.

By this time the preacher was all broke up. He was a nice healthy-lookin' young chap, one of the strawb'ry-blond kind, with pink and white cheeks, and hair as soft as a toy spaniel's. It turns out that he was new to the job, and this was his first call to spiel off the splicin' service.

”I trust,” says he, ”that there is nothing--er--that no one has any valid objection to the uniting of this couple?”

”I will convince you of that,” says Doc Pinphoodle, speakin' up brisk and c.o.c.ky, ”by putting to this young lady a few pertinent questions.”

Well, he did. As a cross-examiner for the defense he was a regular Joe Choate. Inside of two minutes he'd made torn mosquito netting of Sadie's kick, shown her up for a rank outsider, and put us both through the ropes.

”Now,” says he, with a kind of calm, satisfied I've-swallowed-the-canary smile, ”we will proceed with the ceremony.”

Sadie was near cryin with the mad in her, she bein' a hard loser at any game. ”You're an old fraud, that's what you are!” she spits out. ”And you're just marrying Pinckney's silly old aunt to get her money.”

But that rolls off Doc like a damage suit off'm a corporation. He just smiles back at her, and goes to chirkin' up Aunt Tillie. Doc was it, and knew where he stood. He had us down and out. In five minutes more he'd have a two-hundred-pound wife and a fifty-thousand-dollar income.

”It strikes me,” says he, over his shoulder, ”that if I had got hold of a fortune in the way you got yours, young woman, I wouldn't make any comments about mercenary marriages.”

Well, say, up to that time I had a half-baked idea that maybe I wasn't called on to block his little game, but when he begins to rub it into Sadie I sours on Doc right away. And it always does take one or two good punches to warm me up to a sc.r.a.p. I begins to do some swift thinkin'.

”Hold on there, Doc,” says I. ”I'll give in that you've got our case quashed as it stood. But maybe there's someone else that's got an interest in these doin's.”

”Ah!” says he. ”And who might that be?”