The sike felt a soft touch on his elbow. Lieutenant Dolly Barrett’s large gray eyes glowed warmly up into his. “You ought to be running the Peace Conference,” she opined. “And to think,” mourned the sike, “that next month I’ll be acting the melancholy mentor to a flock of corn-fed prairie-rubes.” “Court will convene in my private room for matrimonial purposes at once,” proclaimed the magistrate. The ceremony was brief and business-like. The witnesses were the sike and Mrs. Barrett, quite close together, the flit and Miss McSears (bracketed by the former), the gob, with rating and ship attached, Mr. Foxley in a shaken hand, and Mrs. Eudora Fotheringay in letters half an inch high and ninety degrees slant. The whole party attended by the court officials went out to see the pair off. The flit, saluting, stepped forward. “Cab, sir?” “Certainly,” assented the bridegroom. “Certainly not,” amended the bride. “Not?” queried the flit, crestfallen. “Taxi,” said the new Mrs. Watts decisively, hailing one as it rounded the corner. “Cab, lady?” coyly invited the flit, turning to Miss McSears, as the bridal couple were whirled away. “Subway,” retorted Pa McSears emphatically, “speaking for self and daughter.” “Cab, sir?” the operator solicited Mr. Bingle Foxley. “Help!” responded that gentleman, making a leap for the nearest haven, which chanced to be Mrs. Fotheringay’s limousine, where he was hospitably received. “Cab, Chaw?” cried the desperate flit, seeing his custom dropping away. “Life is sweet,” observed the gob, and followed Mr. Foxley into his perfumed retirement. “Cab, buddy?” almost wept Corporal Slayter, addressing himself in a seductive coo to Professor Follansbee James. “_And_ sister,” he added, noting the confidential juxtaposition of the two heads. “We are walking, thank you so much,” said Lieutenant Barrett sweetly. “Old Bird,” the sorrowing flit addressed the metallic accomplice of his crimes, “we are, as it were, dumped into Cupid’s ash-can. Cheer up! I will never desert you.” His eyes fell upon the legend, “To be returned.” “I’d forgotten about that,” he murmured, “Where to, I wonder?” He reversed the placard and was confronted by this warning in red and minatory letters: Do Not Operate Condemned as DANGEROUS The flit cast a pensive eye up the street where the dust of the bridal departure still hung, shifted it to the wake of the Fotheringay limousine bearing the gob and the reformed Foxley from the stricken field, glanced yearningly toward the corner where Miss Nora McSears, temporarily a parental captive, threw him a swift and comforting signal, and regarded with benignity two uniformed figures marching along the sidewalk side-by-side, in that sweet accord which apostles of the millennium prescribe not alone for the lion and the lamb, but also for the officer and the soldier in the ranks.