s old Busbee. "Have you?"

"Yes," says Mr. Robert, smilin' mushy. "I--er--the fact is, I am going
to be married."

"The bonehead!" I whispers husky.

Old Lawson T. Ryder, the one with the bushy white eyebrows and the heavy
dewlaps, he puffs out his cheeks and works that under jaw of his
menacin'.

"Really!" says he. "But what about the _Balboa_? Eh?"

"Oh!" says Mr. Robert casual. "The _Balboa_? Yes, yes! Didn't I tell
someone to attend to that? A charter, wasn't it? Torchy, were you----"

I shakes my head.

"Perhaps it was Mr. Piddie, then," says he. "Anyway, I thought I
asked----"

"Here's Piddie now, sir," says I. "Looks like he'd been after
something."

He's a wreck, that's all. His derby is caved in, his black cutaway all
smooched with lime or something, and one eye is tinted up lovely. In his
right fist, though, he has a long yellow envelope.

"The charter!" he gasps out dramatic. "_Balboa!_"

And, by piecin' out more jerky bulletins, it's clear that Piddie has
pulled off the prize stunt of his whole career. He'd gone out after that
charter at lunchtime the day before, been stalled off by office clerks
probably subsidized by the opposition, spent the night hangin' around
the water-front, and got mixed up with a dock gang; but, by bein' on
hand early, he'd caught one of the shippin' firm and closed the option
barely two hours before it lapsed. And as he sinks limp into a chair he
glances appealin' at Mr. Robert, no doubt expectin' to be decorated on
the spot.

"By George!" says Mr. Robert. "Good work! But you haven't heard of my
great luck meantime. Listen, Piddie. I am to be married!"

I thought Piddie would croak.

"Think of that, gentlemen," cuts in old Busbee sarcastic. "He is to be
married!"

But it needs more 'n a little jab like that to bring Mr. Robert out of
his Romeo trance. Honest, the way he carries on is amazin'. You might
have thought this was the first case on record where a girl who'd said
she wouldn't had changed her mind. And, so far as any other happenin's
was concerned, he might have been deaf, dumb, and blind. The entire news
of the world that mornin' he could boil down into one official
statement: Elsa had said she'd have him! Hip, hip! Banzai! Elsa forever!
He flashed that miniature of her and passed it around. He nudges Lawson
T. Ryder playful in the short ribs, hammers Deacon Larkin on the back,
and then groups himself, beamin' foolish, with one arm around old Busbee
an