he matter she was gone. Then it all fell
on Marion. Course, if she'd been a paid nurse she never would have stood
for this continuous double-time act. Or if there was home inspectors,
same as there are for factories, the old man would have been jacked up
for violatin' the labor laws. But being only a daughter, there's nobody
to step in and remind him that slavery has gone out of style and that in
most states the female of the species was gettin' to be a reg'lar
person. In fact, there was few who thought Marion was doin' any more'n
she had a right to do. Wasn't he her father, and wasn't he payin' all
the bills?

"To be sure," adds Vee, "he didn't realize what an old tyrant he was.
Nor did Marion. She considered it her duty, and never complained."

"Then I don't see who could have crashed in," said I.

"No one could," said Vee. "That was the pity."

And it seems for the last couple of years the old boy insisted on
settlin' down in his home here, where he could shuffle off comfortable.
He'd been mighty slow about it, though, and when he finally headed West
it was discovered that, through poor managin' and war conditions, the
income they'd been livin' on had shrunk considerable. The fine old house
was left free and clear, but there was hardly enough to keep it up
unless Marion could rustle a job somewhere.

"And all she knows how to do is nurse," says Vee. "She's not even a
trained nurse at that."

"Ain't there anybody she could marry?" I suggests.

"That's the tragic part, Torchy," says Vee. "There is--Mr. Biggies."

"What, 'Puffy' Biggles!" says I. "Not that old prune face with the shiny
dome and the baggy eyes?"

Vee says he's the one. He's been hoverin' 'round, like an old buzzard,
for three or four years now, playin' chess with the old man while he
lasted, but always with his pop-eyes fixed on Marion. And since she's
been left alone he'd been callin' reg'lar once a week, urging her to be
his tootsy-wootsy No. 3. He was the main wheeze in some third-rate life
insurance concern, I believe, and fairly well off, and he owned a classy
place over near the Country Club. But he had a 44 belt, a chin like a
pelican, and he was so short of breath that everybody called him
"Puffy" Biggles. Besides, he was fifty.

"A hot old Romeo he'd make for a nice girl like that," says I. "Is he
her best bet? Ain't there any second choice?"

"There was another," says Vee. "Rather a nice chap, too--that Mr. Ellery
Prescott, who pla