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 massage 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 cocky, "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