down at the far
end we could see a little bunch of folks standin' around as if they was
waitin' for somethin' to happen.

Sadie didn't make any false motions. She sailed down the center aisle
and took Aunt Tillie by the arm. She was a dumpy, pie-faced old girl,
with plenty of ballast to keep her shoes down, and a lot of genuine
store hair that was puffed and waved like the specimens you see in the
Sixth-ave. show cases. She was actin' kind of nervous, and grinnin' a
silly kind of grin, but when she spots Sadie she quit that and puts on a
look like the hired girl wears when she's been caught bein' kissed by
the grocery boy.

"You haven't done it, have you?" says Sadie.

"No," says Aunt Tillie; "but it's going to be done just as soon as the
rector gets on his other coat."

"Now please don't, Mrs. Winfield," says Sadie, gettin' a waist grip on
the old girl, and rubbin' her cheek up against her shoulder in that
purry, coaxin' way she has. "You know how badly we should all feel if it
didn't turn out well, and Pinckney--"

"He's a meddlesome, impertinent young scamp!" says Aunt Tillie, growin'
red under the layers of rice powder. "Haven't I a right to marry without
consulting him, I'd like to know?"

"Oh, yes, of course," says Sadie, soothing her down, "but Pinckney
says--"

"Don't tell me anything that he says, not a word!" she shouts. "I won't
listen to it. He had the impudence to suggest that my dear Mulli was
a--a corn doctor, or something like that."

"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.

"Hello, Doc!" says I. "So you're the