nd I
would like to be married at her home some time soon,' said I; 'and if
you don't wish it that way,' said I, 'I guess we can find a place that
will be big enough and will answer just as well,' said I; and then I
began to start up warmer and get bolder, when he shut me off with a
string of cuss words that ran all over me. I didn't suppose he could
talk that way, but no one in the office seemed to mind, although I'll
bet you could have heard him a mile down South Street."

"South Street?" I asked, in a surprised tone not observed by the
single-minded Jim. "Where's his office?"

"Fulton Market."

"The place they deal in fish at wholesale. And yet you say he is a
rubber-neck for a cracker house?" I connected the faint suggestion of
fish at the Fifth Avenue Hotel with the case at this point, and knew at
once Tescheron's business, and from my knowledge gained by many
inspections at the market inferred that the father of the girl was a
millionaire.

"A queer place for the cracker business," said I.

"Well, a fellow told me; that's all I know," said Jim. "I haven't been
sitting on the same sofa with the old gentleman asking him questions."

"Jim, do you know that you have this prospective father-in-law all
twisted? He's something besides a cheap dude," said I. "He's no
rubber-neck. I'll bet the old chap is well off, and do you want to know
why he dresses so fine and keeps cologne on his handkerchief?"

"That's right, he does," said Jim with a wondering gaze. "And it's
sickening to find a little, weazened, sawed-off cuss doing it--just to
get people to look around to locate him, I warrant. There'd be no
questions about old Tescheron if it warn't for his gasoline."

"No, no. You are away off, Jim. You don't know so much about perfumes
and their antidotes as I do, and besides, you're not expected to,
because it is not your profession. My nose is my bread and butter. I am
an expert in the analysis of the nether atmosphere. Any composite bunch
of air striking my acute analytic apparatus is at once split into its
elements. Put me blindfolded in a woman's kitchen and I can tell you if
there is pumpkin pie and rhubarb under cover there, and where they keep
the butter and cheese. I can tell you what kind of microbes live in the
cellar and all about their relatives, and even if there are moths or
other evidences of winged occupancy among the fauna of the mattresses on
the floors above. Wonderful, of course; but it's in my lin