the way of Pevensey,--. and of I wonder how many
others? Well, may Heaven be very gracious to us both!" he said. "For I
am going to do it."

Then composedly he took up the telephone upon his desk and called Roger
Stapylton.

"I want you to come at once to Dr. Rabbet's,--yes, the rectory, next
door to St. Luke's. Patricia and I are to be married there in half an
hour. We are on our way to the City Hall to get the license now.... No,
she might change her mind again, you see.... I have not the least notion
how it happened. I don't care.... Then you will have to be rude to him
or else not see your only daughter married.... Kindly permit me to
repeat, sir, that I don't care about that or anything else. And for the
rest, Patricia was twenty-one last December."

The colonel hung up the receiver. "And now," he said, "we are going to
the City Hall."

"Are you?" said Patricia, with courteous interest. "Well, my way lies
uptown. I have to stop in at Greenberg's and get a mustard plaster for
the parrot."

He had his hat by this. "It isn't cool enough for me to need an
overcoat, is it?"

"I think you must be crazy," she said, sharply.

"Of course I am. So I am going to marry you."

"Let me go--! Oh, and I had thought you were a gentleman--."

"I fear that at present I am simply masculine." He became aware that his
hands, in gripping both her shoulders, were hurting the girl.

"Come now," he continued, "will you go quietly or will I have to carry
you?"

She said, "And you would, too--." She spoke in wonder, for Patricia had
glimpsed an unguessed Rudolph Musgrave.

His hands went under her arm-pits and he lifted her like a feather. He
held her thus at arm's length.

"You--you adorable whirligig!" he laughed. "I am a stronger animal than
you. It would be as easy for me to murder you as it would be for you to
kill one of those flies on the window-pane. Do you quite understand that
fact, Patricia?"

"Oh, but you are an idiot--."

"In wanting you, my dear?"

"Please put me down."

She thoroughly enjoyed her helplessness. He saw it, long before he
lowered her.

"Why, not so much in that," said Miss Stapylton, "because inasmuch as I
am a woman of superlative charm, of course you can't help yourself. But
how do you know that Dr. Rabbet may not be somewhere else, harrying a
defenseless barkeeper, or superintending the making of dress-shirt
protectors for the Hottentots, or doing something else clerical, when we
get t