Hattie, "will have a chance to chatter about me,
and that will give you and dad a rest."

"Are you going to send back all those beautiful wedding presents?"

Balcome, relieved of his worry over Hattie, had been strolling about,
pulling at a cigar. Now he greeted this last question with a roar of
laughter. "Oh, Hattie, can you beat it! Oh, that's a good one!"

Mrs. Balcome fixed him with an angry eye. "Doesn't he show what he
is?" she inquired. "To laugh at such a time!"

"Beautiful wedding presents!" went on Balcome. "Oh, ha! ha! ha!"

"No sentiment!" added his wife. "No feeling!"

Hattie appealed to Wallace. "Oh, haven't I had my share of
quarreling?" she asked plaintively.

"But we wouldn't quarrel!"

"Oh, yes, we would. I'd remember--and then trouble. I'd always feel
that you and----"

"Hattie!" warned her mother. "You can't discuss that matter."

"Why not?"

"You ask that! Doesn't your good taste--your modesty--tell you that
it's not proper?"

"Oh!--I mustn't discuss it. But if Wallace and I were to marry at
twelve o'clock today, we could discuss it at one o'clock--and quarrel!"

"Mr. Balcome!" entreated Wallace.

Balcome deposited his cigar ashes on the sun-dial. "My boy," he said,
"if a man has to dodge crockery because his wife's jealous about
nothing, what'll it be like if she's got the goods on him?"

"There he goes!" triumphed Mrs. Balcome. "It's just what I expected!"
And to Hattie, who was admiring the Kewpie, "Put that down!" Then to
Wallace, "Oh, she gets more like her father every day! Now drop
that!"--for Hattie, having let fall the Kewpie, had picked up the
flaxen-haired doll. "Wallace, she never came to this decision alone!"

"Alan Farvel!" accused Wallace, hotly.

Hattie turned on him. "You--you dare to say that!"

"Oh, I knew you'd stick up for him! You like him."

"He's good! He's fine, and big! He's a man!--and a clean man."

"_I_ meant Sue Milo." Mrs. Balcome interposed her bulk between them.

"She's not to blame!" defended Hattie. "On the contrary--she wouldn't
let me decide quickly. We talked about it 'way into the night."

Balcome twitched a rose voile sleeve. "Don't mind her, Hattie," he
counseled. "That's the kind of wild thing she says about me."

"Can you deny that Susan has influenced you?" persisted Mrs. Balcome.
"Can you truthfully say--_Oh_!" For over the wall, and over the little
white door, had come a large, gay-striped rubber bal