asked Carrington, but Presidio coughed so loudly she did not hear her husband's question. Holt drank to the bride and groom several times before he began soberly to believe he was not in a dream. Mr. and Mrs. Presidio beamed broadly, and declared that life without romance was no kind of a life for honest folk to live.

   "Holt!" exclaimed Carrington, when the train carriage was announced, "you've been a brick about all this. I don't know how to show my appreciation."

   "I'll tell you how," suggested Presidio. "Let Mr. Holt be the one to tell Mr. Curtis. He deserves the privilege of informing the governor."

   "The very thing, Holt, old chap!" cried Carrington. "Will you do it?"

   "You're awfully kind," answered Holt, "but I think this old friend could do it with more art and understanding."

   "What, my Willie?" cried Willie's wife. "He'll do it to the Queen's taste. Won't you, Willie?"

   "I will, in company with Mr. Holt—my friend and your admirer. He sits in front every night," he added, in explanation to Carrington.

   As the carriage with the happy pair drove away to the station, Presidio, with compulsive ardor, took the arm of Mr. Francis Holt; and together they marched up the avenue to inform Mr. Curtis of the marriage of his daughter.

   "What's this! What's this!" exclaimed Mr. Bowser, as he came home the other evening and found Mrs. Bowser lying on the sofa and looking very much distressed.

   "The doctor says it's the grip—a second attack," she explained. "I was taken with a chill and headache about noon and—"

   "Grip? Second attack? That's all nonsense, Mrs. Bowser! Nobody can have the grip a second time."

   "But the doctor says so."

   "Then the doctor is an idiot, and I'll tell him so to his face. I know what's the matter with you. You've been walking around the backyard barefoot or doing some other foolish thing. I expected it, however. No woman is happy unless she's flat down about half the time. How on earth any of your sex manage to live to be twenty years old is a mystery to me. The average woman has no more sense than a rag baby."

   "I haven't been careless," she replied.

 Prev. P 14/105 next