"He's a sticker, too," says Sadie. "I don't know where Aunt Tillie found
him, but Pinckney says he's been coming out from the city every other
day for a couple of weeks. She's been meeting him at the station and
taking him for drives. She says he's some sort of an East Indian priest,
and that he's giving her lessons in a new faith cure that she's taking
up. To-day, though, after she'd gone off, the housekeeper found that her
trunk had been smuggled to the station. Then a note was picked up in her
room. It said something about meeting her at the church of St.
Paul's-in-the-Wood, at four-thirty, and was signed, 'Your darling
Mulli.' Oh, dear, it's almost half-past now! Can't you go any faster,
Francois?"
I thought he couldn't, but he did. He jammed the speed lever up another
notch, and in a minute more we were hittin' only the high places. We
caromed against them red-leather cushions like a couple of pebbles in a
bottle, and it was a case of holdin' on and hoping the thing would stay
right side up. I hadn't worked up much enthusiasm about gettin' to St.
Paul's-in-the-Wood before, but I did then, all right. Never was so glad
to see a church loom up as I was that one.
"That's her carriage at the chapel door," says Sadie. "Shorty, we must
stop this thing."
"It's out of my line," says I, "but I'll help all I can."
We made a break for the front door and butted right in, just as though
they'd sent us cards. It wasn't very light inside, but down at the far
end we could see a little bunch of folks standin' around as if they was
waitin' for somethin' to happen.
Sadie didn't make any false motions. She sailed down the center aisle
and took Aunt Tillie by the arm. She was a dumpy, pie-faced old girl,
with plenty of ballast to keep her shoes down, and a lot of genuine
store hair that was puffed and waved like the specimens you see in the
Sixth-ave. show cases. She was actin' kind of nervous, and grinnin' a
silly kind of grin, but when she spots Sadie she quit that and puts on a
look like the hired girl wears when she's been caught bein' kissed by
the grocery boy.
"You haven't done it, have you?" says Sadie.
"No," says Aunt Tillie; "but it's going to be done just as soon as the
rector gets on his other coat."
"Now please don't, Mrs. Winfield," says Sadie, gettin' a waist grip on
the old girl, and rubbin' her cheek up against her shoulder in that
purry, coaxin' way she has. "You know how badly we should all feel if it
didn't turn out well, and Pinckney--"
"He's a meddlesome, impertinent young scamp!" says Aunt Tillie, growin'
red under the layers of rice powder. "Haven't I a right to marry without
consulting him, I'd like to know?"
"Oh, yes, of course," says Sadie, soothing her down, "but Pinckney
says--"
"Don't tell me anything that he says, not a word!" she shouts. "I won't
listen to it. He had the impudence to suggest that my dear Mulli was
a--a corn doctor, or something like that."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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