up Lucy. Say, she's a
regular person, she is. She was making good, too, and having a whale of
a time when all of a sudden--Say, Torchy, if it was some break I made I
want to know it, so I can square myself. She wouldn't tell me; wouldn't
have a word to say. But listen, perhaps if you asked her----"

"Hey, back up!" says I.

"You know, if it hadn't been for you I might never have seen her," he
goes on. "You were there when it began, and if there's to be a finish
you might as well be in on that, too. I've got to know what it was I
did, though. Honest, I can't remember anything particularly raw. Been
chewing over it for two nights. If you could just----"

Well, at the end of ten minutes I agrees to go up to the plumber's
house, and if the new Mrs. Cutler will see me I says I'll put it up to
her.

"But you got to come along and hang around outside while I'm doing it,"
I insists.

"I'll do anything that either you or Lucy asks," says he. "I'll go the
limit."

"That listens fair enough," says I.

So that's how it happens I'm waitin' in the plumber's parlor for Babe
Cutler's runaway bride. And say, when she shows up in that zippy sport
suit, just in from a long tramp across country, she looks some classy.
First off she's inclined to be nervous and jumpy and don't want to talk
about Babe at all.

"Oh, he's all right," says she. "I have nothing against him. He--he
meant well."

"As bad as that, was he?" says I. "I shall hate to tell him."

"But it wasn't Babe, at all," she insists. "Don't you dare say it was,
either. If you must know, it was that awful hotel life. I--I just
couldn't stand it."

"Eh?" says I, and I expect I must have been gawpin' some. "Why, I
understand you were at one of the swellest----"

"We were," says she. "That was the trouble. And I suppose if I'd known
how, I might have had a swell time. But I didn't. I'd had no practice.
And say, if you think you can learn to be a regular winter resort person
in a few weeks just try it once. I did. I went at it wholesale. All of
the things I'd wanted to do and thought I could do, I tackled. It looks
like a lot of fun to see those girls start off with their golf clubs.
Seems easy to swing a driver and crack out the little white ball. Take
it from me, though, it's nothing of the kind. Why, I spent hours and
hours out on the practice tee with a grouchy Scotch professional trying
my best to hit it right. And I couldn't. At the end of three weeks I was
stil