ction
for breach of promise if there was no evidence to support it. And once
the papers were filed their bolt would have been shot. Some way must be
devised whereby the Reverend Winthrop Oaklander could be made to
perceive that Tutt & Tutt meant business, and--equally imperative
--whereby Georgie would be impressed with the fact that not
for nothing had she come to them--that is, to him--for help.

The fact of the matter was that the whole thing had become rather
hysterical. Tutt, though having nothing seriously to reproach himself
with, was constantly haunted by a sense of being rather ridiculous and
doing something behind his wife's back. He told himself that his
Platonic regard for Georgie was a noble thing and did him honor, but it
was an honor which he preferred to wear as an entirely private
decoration. He was conscious of being laughed at by Willie and Scraggs
and disapproved of by Miss Wiggin, who was very snippy to him. And in
addition there was the omnipresent horror of having Abigail unearth his
philandering. He now not only thought of Mrs. Allison as Georgie but
addressed her thus, and there was quite a tidy little bill at the
florist's for flowers that he had sent her. In one respect only did he
exhibit even the most elementary caution--he wrote and signed all his
letters to her himself upon the typewriter, and filed copies in the
safe.

"So there we are!" he sighed as he gave to Mrs. Allison a somewhat
expurgated, or rather emasculated version of the Reverend Winthrop's
visit. "We have got to hand him something hot or make up our minds to
surrender. In a word we have got to scare him--Georgie."

And then it was that, like the apocryphal mosquito, the Fat and Skinny
Club justified its attempted existence. For the indefatigable Sorg made
an unheralded reappearance in the outer office and insisted upon seeing
Tutt, loudly asserting that he had reason to believe that if a new
application were now made to another judge--whom he knew--it would be
more favorably received. Tutt went to the doorway and stood there
barring the entrance and expostulating with him.

"All right!" shouted Sorg. "All right! I hear you! But don't tell me
that a man named Solomon Swackhamer can change his name to Phillips
Brooks Vanderbilt and in the same breath a reputable body of citizens be
denied the right to call themselves what they please!"

"He don't understand!" explained Tutt to Georgie, who had listened with
wide, dreamy e