"I know it," says I, "and a sacrilegious sight it is. God never made you that way, Mack Lonsbury. Why do you scarify His works with this presumptuous kind of ribaldry?" "Why, Andy," says he, "they've elected me justice of the peace since you left." I looked at Mack close. He was restless and inspired. A justice of the peace ought to be disconsolate and assuaged. Just then a young woman passed on the sidewalk; and I saw Mack kind of half snicker and blush, and then he raised up his hat and smiled and bowed, and she smiled and bowed, and went on by. "No hope for you," says I, "if you've got the Mary-Jane infirmity at your age. I thought it wasn't going to take on you. And patent leather shoes! All this in two little short months!" "I'm going to marry the young lady who just passed to-night," says Mack, in a kind of flutter. "I forgot something at the post-office," says I, and walked away quick. I overtook that young woman a hundred yards away. I raised my hat and told her my name. She was about nineteen; and young for her age. She blushed, and then looked at me cool, like I was the snow scene from the "Two Orphans [8]." [FOOTNOTE 8: "Two Orphans"--probably a reference to a popular play, "Le Deux Orphelines," written in 1875 by Adolphe d'Ennery and Eugène Cormon] "I understand you are to be married to-night," I said. "Correct," says she. "You got any objections?" "Listen, sissy," I begins. "My name is Miss Rebosa Redd," says she in a pained way. "I know it," says I. "Now, Rebosa, I'm old enough to have owed money to your father. And that old, specious, dressed-up, garbled, sea-sick ptomaine prancing about avidiously like an irremediable turkey gobbler with patent leather shoes on is my best friend. Why did you go and get him invested in this marriage business?" "Why, he was the only chance there was," answers Miss Rebosa. "Nay," says I, giving a sickening look of admiration at her complexion and style of features; "with your beauty you might pick any kind of a man. Listen, Rebosa. Old Mack ain't the man you want. He was twenty-two when you was _née_ Reed, as the papers say. This bursting into bloom won't last with him. He's all ventilated with oldness and rectitude and decay. Old Mack's down with a case of Indian summer. He overlooked his bet when he was young; and now he's suing Nature for the interest on the promissory note he took from Cupid instead of the cash. Rebosa, are you bent on having this marriage occur?" "Why, sure I am," says she, oscillating the pansies on her hat, "and so is somebody else, I reckon." "What time is it to take place?" I asks. "At six o'clock," says she. I made up my mind right away what to do. I'd save old Mack if I could. To have a good, seasoned, ineligible man like that turn chicken for a girl that hadn't quit eating slate pencils and buttoning in the back was more than I could look on with easiness.