They motored over to the village of Jolicoeur in New Jersey. There a local attorney, a friend of McNiven's, met them and vouched for them before the town clerk, who made out the license. He asked Kedzie if she had been married before, and she was so young and pretty and so plainly a girl that he laughed when he asked the question. And for answer Kedzie just laughed, too. He wrote down that she had never been married before. Kedzie had not really lied, and they can't arrest a person, surely, for just laughing. Not that she did not believe in the motto which Blanche Bates used to read so convincingly in “The Darling of the Gods”: “It is better to lie a little than to be unhappy much.” Jim was shocked at the situation, but he could hardly be so ungallant as to call his fiancee a liar at such a time. Besides, he had heard that the law is interested in people's persons and not their names, and he was marrying Kedzie personally. When the license was made out the lawyer whispered to the town clerk that it would be made worth his while to suppress the news for thirty days or more, and the clerk winked and grinned. Business was slow in matrimony, and he needed any little tips. Now that they were licensed, Jim and Kedzie, being non-residents of New Jersey, must wait twenty-four hours before they could be married. They motored back to New York and went to the theater to kill the evening. The next afternoon Jim called for Kedzie, and they motored again to Jolicoeur for the ceremony. Mr. and Mrs. Thropp went along as witnesses and to make sure. The lawyer had found a starveling parson in Jolicoeur who asked the fatal questions and pronounced the twain man and wife, adding the warning, “Whom God hath joined, let no man put asunder.” Jim Dyckman was so befuddled that he heard it, “Let no man join whom God hath put asunder.” But he paid the preacher well and added a large sum for the church on condition that the news of the marriage be kept out of the public records till the last legal moment. Dyckman had tried to do the honorable thing by Kedzie. He was certainly generous, for a man can hardly give a woman more than himself and all he has. Dyckman, however, had been ashamed of a mental reservation or two. He could not repress a sneaking feeling that he had been less the kidnapper than the napped kid in this elopement. If anybody were to be arrested for abduction, it would not be he. He reviled himself for confessing this to himself, and his sympathies went out to Kedzie because the poor child had to be yoked with a reluctant mate. A bridegroom ought to bring to his bride, above all things else, an eager heart. And that Jim could not bring.