Mrs. Balcome wiped her eyes. "Oh, poor Wallace! Poor boy!" she mourned. And to Sue, "I hope you're satisfied! You started out yesterday to stop this wedding--your own brother's wedding!--and you've succeeded. I can't fathom your motives--except that some women, when they fail to land husbands of their own, simply hate to see anybody else have one. It's the envy of the--soured spinster." Sue was busily arranging the toys. "So I can't land a husband, eh?" she laughed. "But your mother tells me that you're championing the unmarried alliance," went on Mrs. Balcome. "You mean Laura Farvel, of course. Well, not exactly. You see, neither mother nor I know anything against Mrs. Farvel except what Mrs. Farvel has said herself. But one thing is certain: even an unmarried alliance, as you call it, is more decent than a marriage without love." "Oh, slam!" Balcome exploded in pure joy. "How dare you!" cried Mrs. Balcome, dividing an angry look between her husband and Sue. "And," Sue went on serenely, "when it comes to that, I respect an unmarried woman with a child fully as much as I do a married woman with a poodle." "Wow!" shouted Balcome. "I think," proceeded Mrs. Balcome, suddenly mindful of the existence of her own poodle, and looking calmly about for Babette, "I think that you have softening of the brain." "Well,"--Sue was tinkering with the smoke-stack--"I'd rather have softening of the brain than hardening of the heart." "Isn't she funny?" demanded Balcome, to draw his wife's fire. "She doesn't dare to stand up for Wallace you'll notice, Sue,--though she'd like to. But she can't because she's raved against that kind of thing for years. So she has to abuse somebody else." "There's a man for you!" cried his better half. "To stand by and hear his own wife insulted!--the mother of his child--and join in it! How infamous! How base!" Satisfied with results, Balcome consulted his watch. "Well, I'm a busy man," he observed, and kissed Hattie. "Where is your father going?" demanded Mrs. Balcome. "Where is father going?" telephoned Sue, taking off hat and coat. "Buffalo." Mrs. Balcome threw up the hand that was not engaged with the dog. "Oh, what shall we say to Buffalo!" she said tragically. "Oh, how can I ever go back!" "Mr. Balcome, do you want to settle on some explanation?" "Advise Hattie's mother"--Balcome shook a warning finger--"that for a change she'd better tell the truth." "Oh!"--the shot told. "As if I don't always tell it--always!" Then to Sue, "Suppose we say that the bridegroom is sick?" Inarticulate with mirth, Balcome gave Sue a parting pat on the shoulder and started away. "But, John!" Astounded at being thus directly addressed, and before he could bethink himself not to seem to have heard, Balcome brought short, silently appealing to Sue for her opinion of this extraordinary state of affairs.