topped at Pochette's door the girls ran up and tangled their arms
around each other and wasted enough kisses to make Frosty and me swear.
And they whispered things, and then laughed about it, and whispered some
more, and all we could hear was a gurgle of "You dear!" and the like of
that. Frosty and I didn't do much; we just looked at each other and
grinned. And it's long odds we understood each other quite as well as the
girls did after they'd whispered and gurgled an hour.

We had an early dinner--or supper--and ate fried bacon and stewed
prunes--and right there I couldn't keep the joke, but had to tell the
girls about how Frosty and I had deviled Beryl's father, that time. They
could see the point, all right, and they seemed to appreciate it, too.

After that, we all talked at once, sometimes; and sometimes we wouldn't
have a thing to say--times when the girls would look at each other and
smile, with their eyes all shiny. Frosty and I would look at them, and
then at each other; and Frosty's eyes were shiny, too.

Then we went on, with the motor purring love-songs and sliding the miles
behind us, while Frosty and Edith cooed in the tonneau behind us, and
didn't thank us to look around or interrupt. Beryl and I didn't say much;
I was driving as fast as was wise, and sometimes faster. There was always
the chance that the other car would come slithering along on our trail.
Besides, it was enough just to know that this was real, and that Beryl
would marry me just as soon as we found a preacher. There was no incentive
to linger along the road.

It yet lacked an hour of sunset when we slid into Osage and stopped before
a little goods-box church, with a sample of the same style of architecture
chucked close against one side.

We left the girls with the preacher's wife, and Frosty wrote down our
ages--Beryl was twenty-one, if you're curious--and our parents' names and
where we were born, and if we were black or white, and a few other
impertinent things which he, having been through it himself, insisted was
necessary. Then he hustled out after the license, while I went over to the
dry-goods and jewelry store to get a ring. I will say that Osage puts up a
mighty poor showing of wedding-rings.

We were married. I suppose I ought to stop now and describe just how it
was, and what the bride wore, and a list of the presents. But it didn't
last long enough to be clear in my mind. Everything is a bit hazy, just
there. I dropped t