"But think of her poor mother's feelings--" "Her mother has nothing whatever to do with it, sir. See here, we'll put that in the contract." He was visibly disturbed by the thought of what the oversight might have meant to him. "And now, when shall we have the wedding?" "Perhaps we'd better leave that to Martha." "We'll leave nothing to anybody." "She'll want to get a trousseau together and all that sort of thing. I'm ready to go through with it at any time, but you know what girls are." He was perspiring. "Yes," said the General with a reminiscent light in his eye. "I daresay they all enjoy a few weeks of courtship and love-making." Eddie gulped suddenly and then shot a quick, hunted look toward the buffet door. "Have a drink?" demanded the other abruptly. He had caught the sign of danger. They strolled into the buffet, arm-in-arm, one loving the world in general, the other hating everybody in it, including the General. Before they parted Eddie Ten Eyck extracted a solemn promise from his future step-father-in-law that he would ascertain Martha's exact weight and report the figure to him on the following day. "It will seem easier if I know just about what to expect," explained the young man. That very afternoon the General, with a timidity that astonished him, requested his stepdaughter to report her correct weight to him on the following morning. He kept his face well screened behind his newspaper while speaking, and his voice was a little thick. "What for, father?" asked Martha, looking up from her book in surprise. Her eyes seemed to grow even larger than the lenses of her spectacles. "Why, you see--er--I'm figuring on a little more insurance," he stammered. "What has my weight to do with it?" "It isn't life insurance," he made haste to explain. A bright idea struck him. "It is fire insurance, my dear." "I don't see what my--" "Of course you don't," he interrupted genially. "It's this way. The fire insurance companies are getting absurdly finicky about the risks. Now they insist on knowing the weight of every inmate of the houses they insure. Has something to do with the displacement of oxygen, I believe. Your mother and I--and the servants, too--expect to be weighed to-night." "Oh," she said, and resumed her reading. He waited for a while, fumbling nervously with his watch chain. "By the way, my dear," he said, "what have you been doing to that bully chap, Eddie Ten Eyck?" "Doing to him? What do you mean?" "Just what I say." "I haven't seen the miserable loafer in months," she said. Her voice was heavy, not unlike that of a man. For some reason she shuffled uneasily in her chair. The book dropped into her capacious lap. "You've been doing something behind my back, you sly minx," he chided. "What do you think happened to-day?" "To Eddie Ten Eyck?"