"Didn"t we see you a minute ago around in Sickle Street, Pop?" inquired Susie. "Looking in that hair-dresser"s window?"

"Maybe you did and maybe you didn"t," replied Mr. Crow, shrewdly. Then, with thinly veiled significance: "I"m purty busy lookin" into a good many things nowadays." He favoured Otto with a penetrating glance. "Ever sence the U. S. A. declared war on Germany, Mr. Otto Schultz."

"How aboudt that sody, Miss Susie?" said Otto, in a pained sort of voice.

"You"d better be saving your money, Otto," she advised, with such firmness that her father looked at her sharply.

"Oh, spiffles!" said Otto, getting still redder.

Mr. Crow was all ears. Alf Reesling burned his fingers on a match he held too long in the hot, still air some six or eight inches from the bowl of his pipe.

"Well, getting married is no joke," said Susie, shaking her pretty head solemnly.

Otto took a deep breath. "You bet you it ain"d," he said, with feeling.

That seemed to give him courage. He took off his straw hat, and, as he ran his finger around the moist "sweat-band," he blurted out: "I don"t mind if you tell your fadder, Susie. Go and tell him."

"Tell him yourself," said Susie.

"As I was saying a few minutes ago," said Otto ingenuously, "the only obchection I had to your tellin" your fadder was that I didn"t want everybody in town to know it before I could get home and tell my mother yet."

"Don"t go away, Alf," said Mr. Crow, darkly. "I"ll need you as a witness. I hereby subpoena you as a witness to what"s goin" to happen in less"n no time. Now, Mr. Otto Schultz, spit it out."

Otto disgorged these cyclonic words:

"I"m going to get married, Mr. Crow, that"s all."

Mr. Crow was equally explicit and quite as brief.

"Only over my dead body," he shouted, and then turned upon Susie. "You go home, Susan Crow! Skedaddle! Get a move on, I say. I"ll nip this blamed German plot right in the beginning. Do you hear me, Susan--"

Susan stared at him. "Hear you?" she cried. "They can hear you up in the graveyard. What on earth"s got into you, Pop? What--"

"You"ll see what"s got into me, purty derned quick," said Anderson, and pointed his long, trembling forefinger at the amazed Mr. Schultz, who had dropped his hat and was stooping over to retrieve it without taking his eyes from the menacing face of the speaker.

It had rolled in the direction of Mr. Alf Reesling. That gentleman obligingly stopped it with his foot. After removing his foot, he undertook to return the hat without stooping at all, the result being that it sped past Otto and landed in the middle of the street some twenty feet away.

"So you think you c"n git married without my consent, do you?" demanded Anderson, witheringly. "You think you c"n sneak around behind my back an"--"

"I ain"d sneakin" aroundt behind anybody"s back," broke in Otto, straightening up. "I don"t know what you are talking aboud, Mr.

Crow,--and needer do you," he added gratuitously. "What for do I haf to get your consent to get married for? I get myself"s consent and my girl"s consent and my fadder"s consent--Say!" His voice rose. "Don"t you think I am of age yet?"

"If you talk loud like that, I"ll run you in fer disturbin" the peace, young feller," warned Anderson, observing that a few of Tinkletown"s citizens were slowly but surely surrendering squatter"s rights to chairs and soap-boxes on the shady side of the block. "Just you keep a civil tongue in--"

"You ain"d answered my question yet," insisted Otto, with increased vigour.

"Here"s your hat, Otto," said Alf Reesling in a conciliatory voice. He was brushing the article with the sleeve of his coat. "A horse must"a"

stepped on it or somethin". I never see--"

"Ain"d I of age, Mr. Crow?" bellowed Otto. "Didn"t I vote for you at the last--"

"That ain"t the question," interrupted Anderson sharply. "The question is, is the girl of age?" He favoured his sixteen-year-old daughter with a fiery glance.

Otto Schultz"s broad, flat face became strangely pinched. There was something positively apoplectic in the hue that spread over it.

"Oh, Pop!" shrieked Susie, a peal of laughter bursting from her lips.

Instantly, however, her two hands were pressed to her mouth, stifling the outburst.

Otto gave her a hurt, surprised--and unmistakably horrified--look. Then a silly grin struggled into existence.

"Maybe she don"d tell the truth aboud her age yet, Mr. Crow," he said huskily. "Women always lie aboud their ages. Maybe she lie aboud hers."

Anderson flared. "Don"t you dare say my daughter lies about her age--or anything else," he roared.

"Whose daughter?" gasped Otto.

"Mine!"

"But she ain"d your daughter."

"_What!_ Well, of all the--"

Words failed Mr. Crow. He looked helplessly, appealingly at Alf Reesling, as if for support.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Words failed Mr. Crow_]

Mr. Reesling rose to the occasion.

"Do you mean to insinuate, Otto Schultz, that--" he began as he started to remove his coat.

By this time Susie felt it was safe to trust herself to speech. She removed her hands from her mouth and cried out:

"He isn"t talking about me, Pop," she gasped. "It"s Gertie b.u.mbelburg."

"Sure," said Otto hastily.

Mr. Crow still being speechless, Alf suspended his belligerent preparations, and c.o.c.king one eye calculatingly, settled the matter of Miss b.u.mbelburg"s age with exasperating accuracy.

"Gertie"s a little past forty-two," he announced. "Born in March, 1875, just back o" where Sid Martin"s feed-store used to be."

The marshal had recovered his composure.

"That"s sufficient," he said, accepting Alf s testimony with a profound air of dignity. "There ain"t no law against anybody marryin" a woman old enough to be his mother."

"Everybody in town give Gertie up long ago," added Alf, amiably. "Only goes to show that while there"s life there"s hope. I"d "a" swore she was on the shelf fer good. How"d you happen to pick her, Otto?"

"She"s all right," growled Otto uncomfortably. Then he added, with considerable acerbity: "I"m goin" to tell her you said she was forty-two, Alf Reesling."

"Well, ain"t she?" demanded Alf, bristling.