“Oh, no!” Lulu disclaimed it. She looked up, flushed, smiling. “I’ve never done this in front of anybody,” she owned. “I don’t know what Dwight and Ina’d say.” She drooped. They rested, and, miraculously, the air of the place had stirred and quickened, as if the crippled, halting melody had some power of its own, and poured this forth, even thus trampled. “I guess you could do ’most anything you set your hand to,” said Cornish. “Oh, no,” Lulu said again. “Sing and play and cook----” “But I can’t earn anything. I’d like to earn something.” But this she had not meant to say. She stopped, rather frightened. Then there is the tragi-comical scene of Lulu Bett’s marriage, a mock marriage unfortunately. One day the brother-in-law of Lulu’s sister arrived from the West. He started to court Lulu. To celebrate his homecoming the whole household had adjourned to a restaurant. There are Lulu, her brother-in-law Dwight, who fulfills in the village the functions of dentist and justice of the peace, Lulu’s sister, Ina, and Ninian, the newcomer. Excited by the dinner, and without being apparently aware that he is uttering before competent witnesses words that might bind him, Ninian declares that he takes Lulu for his lawful wedded wife, and Lulu accepts the challenge. She learns soon enough that Ninian is a bigamist: “Why not say the wedding service?” asked Ninian. In the mention of wedlock there was always something stimulating to Dwight, something of overwhelming humor. He shouted a derisive endorsement of this proposal. “I shouldn’t object,” said Ninian. “Should you, Miss Lulu?” Lulu now burned the slow red of her torture. They were all looking at her. She made an anguished effort to defend herself. “I don’t know it,” she said, “so I can’t say it.” Ninian leaned toward her. “I, Ninian, take thee, Lulu, to be my wedded wife,” he pronounced. “That’s the way it goes!” “Lulu daren’t say it!” cried Dwight. He laughed so loudly that those at the near tables turned. And, from the fastness of her wifehood and motherhood, Ina laughed. Really, it was ridiculous to think of Lulu that way.... Ninian laughed too. “Course she don’t dare to say it,” he challenged. From within Lulu, the strange Lulu, that other Lulu who sometimes fought her battles, suddenly spoke out: “I, Lulu, take thee, Ninian, to be my wedded husband.” “You will?” Ninian cried. “I will,” she said, laughing tremendously to prove that she too could join in, could be as merry as the rest. “And I will. There, by Jove, now have we entertained you, or haven’t we?” Ninian laughed and pounded his soft fist on the table. “Oh, say, honestly!” Ina was shocked. “I don’t think you ought to--holy things--what’s the _matter_, Dwightie?” Dwight Herbert Deacon’s eyes were staring and his face was scarlet. “Say, by George,” he said, “a civil wedding is binding in this State.”