ight away--she was
expectin' him to call at eight o'clock an' take her to the minister's
place--so it gev' both Rafferty an' me a jar when my dude turns up with
the girl an' pipes us for any old address where people could get
married. Well, I remembers the number of a shovel hat in 56th Street,
an' away we hike, man, girl, an' lady's maid, with never a sign of any
Frenchman anywheres. An', by Jove, in they skipped to the parsonage,
an' were spliced."

"No, George!" exclaimed his highly interested hearer.

"Fact. True as I'm sittin' here. When they were comin' out, a queer
lookin' specimen who opened the door wished 'em happiness. 'Fair
weather to you an' your wife, sir,' he said; an' Mr. Curtis--that's my
fare's name, I asked him--said something about havin' finished one long
voyage an' beginnin' another. Then the fun began. I was just startin'
the machine when a private auto dashes up, an' out jumps a
foreign-lookin' swell. The girl spots him, an' screams his name--Count
Vaseline it sounded like--an' he shouts, 'Here we are, Valtaw'--p'raps
that was his way of sayin' Walter--'Got 'em, by-- You see after
Hermione. I'll fix this--Frenchman?'"

"Don't swear, George," remonstrated the driver's better half.

"I'm not swearin'. Ain't I tellin' you what he said?"

The point was waived.

"And the lady's name was Hermione, was it? It's a pretty name."

"You haven't got it quite right. It was more like the way I said it."

And, indeed, the correction was justified, since it is a regrettable
fact that the taxi-cab driver's wife made "Hermione" rhyme with "bone,"
and laid no stress on the second syllable. Strong in her superior
knowledge, for she was an omnivorous reader of fiction--and Greek names
were fashionable last November--she passed that point also.

"Well?" she demanded breathlessly.

"Ha, ha!" The narrator laughed joyfully. "The Dago Count went for
Curtis as if he was on to a sure thing, but before you could say
'knife' he was on his back on the sidewalk. I've never seen a man put
down so quick. I couldn't have floored him so beautifully if I'd hit
him with a spanner. But that was only part of the entertainment.
Curtis--mind you, before that I'd been treatin' him as an ordinary dude
in evenin' dress--acted like an injarubber man filled with chain
lightning. He shoved 'Valtaw' back into the auto, grabs the brake an'
gear lever, an' puts 'em both out of action, sweeps the two girls into
my c