unhappiest face I ever saw on a man, "I--I've been ready to knock my
fool head off ever since. It was a mistake--a--"

"My letter, please," said Miss Patty coolly, looking back at him without
a blink.

"Please don't look like that!" he begged. "I came in suddenly out of the
darkness, and you--"

"My letter, please!" she said again, raising her eyebrows.

He gave up trying then. He held out the letter and she took it and went
out with her head up and scorn in the very way she trailed her skirt
over the door-sill. But I'm no fool; it didn't need the way he touched
the door-knob where she had been holding it, when he closed the door
after her, to tell me what ailed him.

He was crazy about her from the minute he saw her, and he hadn't a
change of linen or a cent to his name. And she, as you might say, on the
ragged edge of royalty, with queens and princes sending her stomachers
and tiaras until she'd hardly need clothes! Well, a cat may look at a
king.

He went over to the fireplace, where I was putting his coffee to keep it
hot, and looked down at me.

"I've a suspicion, Minnie," he said, "that, to use a vulgar expression,
I've bitten off more than I can chew in this little undertaking, and
that I'm in imminent danger of choking to death. Do you know anybody, a
friend of Miss er--Jennings, named Dorothy?"

"She's got a younger sister of that name," I said, with a sort of chill
going over me. "She's in boarding-school now."

"Oh, no, she's not!" he remarked, picking up the coffee-pot. "It seems
that I met her on the train somewhere or other the day before yesterday,
and ran off with her and married her!"

I sat back on the rug speechless.

"You should have warned me, Minnie," he went on, growing more cheerful
over his chicken and coffee. "I came up here to-night, the proud
possessor of a bunch of keys, a patent folding cork-screw and a pocket,
automobile road map. Inside two hours I have a sanatorium and a wife.
At this rate, Minnie, before morning I may reasonably hope to have a
family."

I sat where I was on the floor and stared into the fire. Don't tell me
the way of the wicked is hard; the wicked get all the fun there is
out of life, and as far as I can see, it's the respectable "in at ten
o'clock and up at seven" part of the wicked's family that has all the
trouble and does the worrying.

"If we could only keep it hidden for a few days!" I said. "But, of
course, the papers will get it, and just now, w