don't know whether it got clear
home to him then or not. He was just about to separate himself from some
remark on the subject when Mrs. Jake cut loose with another squeal.

"Why, Jake Zosco!" says she. "Look at you! Like a tramp you are."

"Well, why not?" says Jake. "Didn't I sleep last night in a
wheelbarrow?"

And when the folks you're callin' on get to droppin' into intimate
personal remarks like that it's time to back out graceful. I guess even
Mrs. Robert decides this wasn't just the evenin' to play the pipe organ.
Before we'd got out they'd opened up the subject of what to do with
young Ellery Bean and the prospects were that he was due for a quick
return to Shelby, N. C.

"I don't see what good that's going to do," says Vee. "I should say that
he needed some kind of mental treatment. Why, his poor foolish head
seems to be filled with nothing but crime and crooks. I don't understand
how he could get that way."

"You would," says I, "if you'd take a full course of Zosco films."

CHAPTER XIII

TORCHY STRAYS FROM BROADWAY

"I must say it listens kind of complicated," says I, after Vee has
explained how I am to arrive at this country house weddin' fest.

"Why, Torchy, it's perfectly simple," says she.

And once more she sketches out the plan, how I'm to take the express to
Springfield, catch a green line trolley that's bound northwest, get off
at Dorr's Crossing, and wait until this Barry Crane party picks me up in
his car.

You see this friend of Vee's who's billed for the blushin' bride act has
decided to have the event pulled off at Birch Crest, the family's summer
home up in the hills of old N. H. Vee has promised to motor up the day
before with the bridesmaid, leavin' me to follow the next mornin'. But
when we come to look up train schedules it develops that the only way to
get to Birch Crest by train is via Boston.

"How about runnin' up to Montreal and droppin' down?" I suggests
sarcastic.

And then comes the word that this organist guy will be on his way up
across lots, after an over-night stop in New Haven, and will take me
aboard if I can make the proper connection.

"Suppose I make a slip, though?" says I. "There I'll be stranded up in
the pie belt with nothing but my feet to ride fifty miles on. Sorry,
Vee, but I guess your old boardin' school chum will have to break into
matrimony without my help."

Maybe you think that settled it. If you do you ain't tried being
married. In