."

And, honest, as I slips out of the Maison Noir and beats it for my
lunch, I felt like I'd done a day's work. What it would come to was by
me. They was off my hands, anyway.

That couldn't have been over a week ago. And here only yesterday Crosby
comes crashin' into the Corrugated general offices, pounds me
enthusiastic on the back, and announces that I'm the best friend he's
got in the world.

"Meanin', I expect," says I, "that Miss Stribble and you have been
gettin' on?"

"Old man," says Crosby, his mild blue eyes sparklin', "she's a wonderful
girl--wonderful! And within a week she's going to be Mrs. Crosby Rhodes.
We start for home just as soon as the Maison Noir can turn out her
trousseau; which is going to be some outfit, take it from me."

I hope I said something appropriate. If I didn't I expect Crosby was too
excited to notice. Also that night I carried home the bulletin to Vee.

"There!" says Vee. "I just knew, the moment I saw her, that she wasn't
at all as that horrid old man tried to make us believe."

"No," says I, "Mame's vamping was just practice stuff. A lot of it is
like that, I expect."

"But wasn't it odd," goes on Vee, "about her meeting the very man she'd
liked from the first?"

"Well, not so very," says I. "With that show window act she had the net
spread kind of wide. The only chance Crosby had of escape was by staying
out of New York, and nobody does that for very long at a time."

CHAPTER VI

TURKEYS ON THE SIDE

Say, I hope this Mr. Hoover of ours gets through trying to feed the
world before another fall. It's a cute little idea all right and ought
to get us in strong with a whole lot of people, but if he don't quit I
know of one party whose reputation as a gentleman farmer is going to be
wrecked beyond repair. And that's me.

I don't know whether it was Vee's auntie that started me out reckless on
this food producin' career, or old Leon Battou, or Mr. G. Basil Pyne.
Maybe they all helped, in their own peculiar way. Auntie's method, of
course, is by throwin' out the scornful sniff. It was while she was
payin' us a month's visit one week way last summer, out at our four-acre
estate on Long Island, that she pulls this sarcastic stuff. Havin'
inspected the baby critical without findin' anything special to kick
about, she suggests that she'd like to look over the grounds.

"Oh, yes, Torchy," chimes in Vee, "do show Auntie your garden."

Maybe you don't get that "your g