ng that there's something fishy about you, or about Ozzie. And it's
your own fault."

"Oh, dad! What a fraud you are!" And the girl smiled. "You know
perfectly well that if you'd been in my place, and had had the
pluck--which you wouldn't have had--you'd have done the same."

"I should," Mr. Prohack immediately admitted. "Because I always want to
be smarter than other people. It's a cheap ambition. But I should have
been wrong. And I'm exceedingly angry with you and I'm suffering from a
sense of outrage, and I should not be at all surprised if all is over
between us. The thing amounts to a scandal, and the worst of it is that
no satisfactory explanation of it can ever be given to the world. If
your Ozzie is up, produce him, and I'll talk to him as he's never been
talked to before. He's the elder, he's a man, and he's the most to
blame."

"Take your overcoat off," said Sissie laughing and kissing him again.
"And don't you dare to say a word to Ozzie. Besides, he isn't in. He's
gone off to business. He always goes at eleven-thirty punctually."

There was a pause.

"Well," said Mr. Prohack. "All I wish to state is that if you had a
feather handy, you could knock me down with it."

"I can see all over your face," Sissie retorted, "that you're so pleased
and relieved you don't know what to do with yourself."

Mr. Prohack perfunctorily denied this, but it was true. His relief that
the wedding lay behind instead of in front of him was immense, and his
spirits rose even higher than they had been when he first woke up. He
loathed all ceremonies, and the prospect of having to escort an
orange-blossom-laden young woman in an automobile to a fashionable
church, and up the aisle thereof, and raise his voice therein, and make
a present of her to some one else, and breathe sugary nothings to a
thousand gapers at a starchy reception,--this prospect had increasingly
become a nightmare to him. Often had he dwelt on it in a condition
resembling panic. And now he felt genuinely grateful to his inexcusable
daughter for her shameless effrontery. He desired greatly to do
something very handsome indeed for her and her excellent tame husband.

"Step in and see my home," she said.

The home consisted of two rooms, one of them a bedroom and the other a
sitting-room, together with a small bathroom that was as dark and dank
as a cell of the Spanish Inquisition, and another apartment which he
took for a cupboard, but which Sissie authorita