sea-sick
ptomaine prancing about avidiously like an irremediable turkey gobbler
with patent leather shoes on is my best friend. Why did you go and get
him invested in this marriage business?"

"Why, he was the only chance there was," answers Miss Rebosa.

"Nay," says I, giving a sickening look of admiration at her complexion
and style of features; "with your beauty you might pick any kind of a
man. Listen, Rebosa. Old Mack ain't the man you want. He was twenty-
two when you was /nee/ Reed, as the papers say. This bursting into
bloom won't last with him. He's all ventilated with oldness and
rectitude and decay. Old Mack's down with a case of Indian summer. He
overlooked his bet when he was young; and now he's suing Nature for
the interest on the promissory note he took from Cupid instead of the
cash. Rebosa, are you bent on having this marriage occur?"

"Why, sure I am," says she, oscillating the pansies on her hat, "and
so is somebody else, I reckon."

"What time is it to take place?" I asks.

"At six o'clock," says she.

I made up my mind right away what to do. I'd save old Mack if I could.
To have a good, seasoned, ineligible man like that turn chicken for a
girl that hadn't quit eating slate pencils and buttoning in the back
was more than I could look on with easiness.

"Rebosa," says I, earnest, drawing upon my display of knowledge
concerning the feminine intuitions of reason--"ain't there a young man
in Pina--a nice young man that you think a heap of?"

"Yep," says Rebosa, nodding her pansies--"Sure there is! What do you
think! Gracious!"

"Does he like you?" I asks. "How does he stand in the matter?"

"Crazy," says Rebosa. "Ma has to wet down the front steps to keep him
from sitting there all the time. But I guess that'll be all over after
to-night," she winds up with a sigh.

"Rebosa," says I, "you don't really experience any of this adoration
called love for old Mack, do you?"

"Lord! no," says the girl, shaking her head. "I think he's as dry as a
lava bed. The idea!"

"Who is this young man that you like, Rebosa?" I inquires.

"It's Eddie Bayles," says she. "He clerks in Crosby's grocery. But he
don't make but thirty-five a month. Ella Noakes was wild about him
once."

"Old Mack tells me," I says, "that he's going to marry you at six
o'clock this evening."

"That's the time," says she. "It's to be at our house."

"Rebosa," says I, "listen to me. If Eddie Bayles had a thousand
dollars cash