But there was bound to be a row anyhow
when they found she intended to marry me instead of McMakin. So we
figured we might just as well be away from there.

"We left your place early on the morning of October 31, 1888--do you
remember the date, Tom? We took the train for Clarksville, Tennessee,
and got there about two o'clock that afternoon. I suppose you have been
in that interesting centre of the tobacco industry. If you have you may
remember that the courthouse of Montgomery County is right across the
street from the best hotel. I got a license and a preacher without any
trouble, and we were married in the hotel parlour that afternoon. One of
the hotel clerks and the county clerk himself were the witnesses.

"We went to Cincinnati and from there to Chicago. There we got rooms out
on the South Side--Hyde Park, they called it. And I got me a job. I had
some money left, but not enough to buy kohinoors and race-horses with.
Beside, I really wanted to get to work--wanted it for the first time
in my life. You remember young Clayton in our class? He and some other
enterprising citizens had a building and loan association. Such things
are no doubt immoral, but I went to work for him.

"We had been in Chicago a week when Lucy wrote home what she had done,
and begged forgiveness for being so abrupt about it. At least, I suppose
that is what she wrote. It was--"

"I remember exactly what she wrote," says Colonel Tom.

"I never knew exactly," says the doctor. "The same mail that brought
word from you that your grandfather had had some sort of a stroke, as a
consequence of our elopement, brought also two letters from Emma. They
had been forwarded from New York to Tennessee, and you had forwarded
them to Chicago.

"Those letters began the trouble. You see, I hadn't told Emma when I
wrote breaking off the engagement that I was going to get married the
next day. And Emma hadn't received my letter, or else had made up her
mind to ignore it. Anyhow, those letters were regular love-letters.

"I hadn't really read one of Emma's letters for months. But somehow
I couldn't help reading these. I had forgotten what a gift for the
expression of sentiment Emma had. She fairly revelled in it, Tom. Those
letters were simply writhing with clinging female adjectives. They
SQUIRMED with affection.

"You may remember that Lucy was a rather jealous sort of a person.
Right in the midst of her alarm and grief and self-reproach over her
grandfa