"Me get married?" questioned Willie, staring at the speaker open-eyed over the top of his spectacles. "Why not?" "Why, bless your heart, I never thought of it!" answered the little man naively. "It's taken 'bout all my time to get other folks spliced together. Besides," he added, "I've had my inventin'." He glanced out of the window at a moving figure, then shot abruptly to the door and called to some one who was passing: "Hi, Jack!" A man in coast-guard uniform waved his hand. "How are you, Willie?" he shouted. "All right," was the reply. "How are you an' Sarah Libbie makin' out?" "Same as ever." "You ain't said nothin' to her yet?" Robert Morton saw the burly fellow in the road sheepishly dig his heel into the sand. "N--o, not yet." "An' never will!" ejaculated the inventor returning wrathfully to the shop. "That feller," he explained as he resumed his seat, "has been upwards, of twenty years tryin' to tell Sarah Libbie Lewis he's in love with her. He knows it an' so does she, but somehow he just can't put the fact into words. I'm clean out of patience with him. Why, one day he actually had the face to come in here an' ask me to tell her--_me_! What do you think of that?" Robert Morton chuckled at his companion's rage. "Did you?" "Did I?" repeated Willie with scorn. "Can you see me doin' it? No, siree! I just up an' told Jack Nickerson if he warn't man enough to do his own courtin' he warn't man enough for any self-respectin' woman to marry. An' furthermore, I said he needn't step foot over the sill of this shop 'till he'd took some action in the matter. That hit him pretty hard, I can tell you, 'cause he used to admire to come in here an' set round whenever he warn't on duty. But he saw I meant it, an' he ain't been since." The old man paused. "I kinder bit off my own nose when I took that stand," he admitted, an intonation of regret in his tone, "'cause Jack's mighty good company. Still, there was nothin' for it but firm handlin'." "How long ago did you cast him out?" Bob asked with a chuckle. "Oh, somethin' over a week or ten days ago," was the reply. "I thought he might have made some progress by now. But I ain't given up hope of him yet. He's been sorter quiet the last two times I've seen him, an' I figger he's mullin' things over, an' mebbe screwin' up his courage." The room was still save for the purr of the plane. "I suppose you will be marrying Miss Hathaway off some day," observed Bob a trifle self-consciously, without raising his eyes from his work.