Their progress spread a horrific stridor through the peace and decorum of the Park’s ordered avenues, and the squirrels awoke in the tree-tops, gibbering with terror, and the birds took wing and fled into the unknown, and the new hippopotamus of the Zoo, surmising that the day of judgment was upon him, repented of his sins in a wail that scarred the ear-drums of the sleeping neighborhood; and policemen, singly and in squads, rushed to the scene and retired before the sight of a moving fortress displaying the American flag, and Reuben Renssalaer Watts chose that time as propitious for a whirlwind advance, under cover of the riot, upon the heart of Miss Carey Vail. As he pleaded earnestly, and with vast expenditure of lung-power, which did not reach beyond the attentive ear of the girl, who was listening with an expression somewhere between happiness, panic, and surrender, the flit tactlessly and abruptly shut down the power to inquire his way, and Mr. Watts was heard (from the Battery on the south to the Bronx on the north) proclaiming the finale and climax of his wooing: “--GOING TO MARRY ME THIS VERY NIGHT, AS IS!” A dead, blank, dismayed silence supervened. The unintentional eavesdroppers stared at each other and away from the pair. Ten blocks distant the hippopotamus laughed raucously. Mr. Watts, justly indignant, turned upon the chauffeur. “Keep her going, you fourth-rate, donkey-engine misfit!” he roared, in tones which proved that he didn’t care who heard him this time. “What church?” inquired the flit promptly. “Not any church,” cried Miss Carey Vail. “I want to go ho-o-ome.” “Oh, be a sport, Vail,” adjured her superior officer. “He looks all right to me. Why not marry him and put him out of his misery?” “Go on; do!” urged Miss McSears. “It’ll be so romantic.” “Maybe it’d be catching,” hopefully suggested Corporal Slayter, who appeared to be holding Miss McSears’s hand. “Happy thought!” contributed the sike. “Don’t spoil the evening’s fun just because of a weak prejudice about formality.” “Oh, I think you’re all mad!” declared Miss Vail tremulously, and suddenly, despite her uniform, she looked very small and feminine and helpless. “You, most of all, Renny, I don’t know what’s come to you.” “I’ve joined the tanks,” said Reuben Renssalaer Watts promptly, “And--” “Don’t!” wailed Miss Vail, half a second too late to forestall the action which went with the statement. “I want to go ho-o-ome!” she faltered. But there was more bewilderment than conviction in her appeal. “Directly after the ceremony,” promised the progressive wooer. “We’ll ride up in my special taxi and break the news to the family.” “Look here, folkses,” broke in the gob. “I’m all for this Lohengrin-Mendelssohn stuff. But it’ll take some scheming. We’ve got the rest of the night, free of entanglements and engagements, except the one we’ve just been witness to, is it not?”