--a thousand dollars, mind you, would buy him a store of
his own--if you and Eddie had that much to excuse matrimony on, would
you consent to marry him this evening at five o'clock?"

The girl looks at me a minute; and I can see these inaudible
cogitations going on inside of her, as women will.

"A thousand dollars?" says she. "Of course I would."

"Come on," says I. "We'll go and see Eddie."

We went up to Crosby's store and called Eddie outside. He looked to be
estimable and freckled; and he had chills and fever when I made my
proposition.

"At five o'clock?" says he, "for a thousand dollars? Please don't wake
me up! Well, you /are/ the rich uncle retired from the spice business
in India! I'll buy out old Crosby and run the store myself."

We went inside and got old man Crosby apart and explained it. I wrote
my check for a thousand dollars and handed it to him. If Eddie and
Rebosa married each other at five he was to turn the money over to
them.

And then I gave 'em my blessing, and went to wander in the wildwood
for a season. I sat on a log and made cogitations on life and old age
and the zodiac and the ways of women and all the disorder that goes
with a lifetime. I passed myself congratulations that I had probably
saved my old friend Mack from his attack of Indian summer. I knew when
he got well of it and shed his infatuation and his patent leather
shoes, he would feel grateful. "To keep old Mack disinvolved," thinks
I, "from relapses like this, is worth more than a thousand dollars."
And most of all I was glad that I'd made a study of women, and wasn't
to be deceived any by their means of conceit and evolution.

It must have been half-past five when I got back home. I stepped in;
and there sat old Mack on the back of his neck in his old clothes with
his blue socks on the window and the History of Civilisation propped
up on his knees.

"This don't look like getting ready for a wedding at six," I says, to
seem innocent.

"Oh," says Mack, reaching for his tobacco, "that was postponed back to
five o'clock. They sent me over a note saying the hour had been
changed. It's all over now. What made you stay away so long, Andy?"

"You heard about the wedding?" I asks.

"I operated it," says he. "I told you I was justice of the peace. The
preacher is off East to visit his folks, and I'm the only one in town
that can perform the dispensations of marriage. I promised Eddie and
Rebosa a month ago I'd marry 'em. He'