"Nonsense!" says he. "No gas meters up there. Forget the disguise.
They both know you, remember."

"Oh, well," says I, "if I can't wear a wig, then I expect I'll have to
go as special messenger sent up with some nutty present or other,--a
five-pound box of candy, or flowers, or----"

"That's it--orchids!" breaks in Mr. Robert. "Robbie expects a bunch
from me about every so often. The very thing!"

So less'n an hour later I'm on my way, with fifty dollars' worth of
freak posies in a box, and instructions to stick around Thundercaps as
long as I can, with my eyes wide open and my ears stretched. Mr.
Robert figures I'll land there too late for the night train back,
anyway, and after that I'm to use my bean. If I finds the case
desp'rate, I'm to beat it for the nearest telegraph office and wire in.

"Poor little girl!" is Mr. Robert's closin' remark. "Poor little
Robbie!"

Cheerful sort of an errand, wa'n't it, bein' sent to butt in on a Keno
curtain raiser? Easy enough workin' up sympathy for the abused bride.
Why, she wa'n't much more'n a kid, and one who'd been coddled and
petted all her life, at that! And here she ups and marries offhand
this two-fisted young hick who turns out to be bad inside. You
wouldn't have guessed it, either; for, barrin' a kind of heavy jaw and
deep-set eyes, he had all the points of a perfectly nice young gent.
Good fam'ly too. Mr. Robert knew two of his brothers well, and durin'
the coo campaign he'd rooted for Nick. Then he had to show a streak
like this!

"But wait!" thinks I. "If I can get anything on him, he sure will have
it handed to him hot when Mr. Robert arrives. I want to see it done
too."

You don't get to places like Thundercaps in a minute, though. It's the
middle of the afternoon before I jumps the way train at a little
mountain station, and then I has to hunt up a jay with a buckboard and
take a ten-mile drive over a course like a roller coaster. They ought
to smooth that Adirondack scenery down some. Crude stuff, I call it.

But, say, the minute we got inside Thundercaps' gates it's
diff'rent--smooth green lawns, lots of flowerbeds, a goldfish
pool,--almost like a chunk of Central Park. In the middle is a
white-sided, red-tiled shack, with pink and white awnings, and odd
windows, and wide, cozy verandas,--just the spot where you'd think a
perfectly good honeymoon might be pulled off.

I'm just unloadin' my bag and the flowerbox when around a corner