"Hell!" said Anthony Fry.
"And did it come back?" the imbecile that had been Johnson Boller gurgled.
The dark, exquisite head burrowed deep on Boller's shoulder.
"Oh, Pudgy!" a muffled voice protested, almost tearfully. "I couldn't do it! I thought I could, but I couldn't, sweetest!"
"And so it came back to its Pudgy-wudgy!" Johnson Boller oozed ecstatically. "So it turned around and came back to its Pudgy!"
Mrs. Boller regarded him solemnly, holding him off for a moment.
"At some awful, awful place north of Albany," she said. "I couldn't go any farther and I—I was going to wire you to come for me, Pudgy! And then I thought I'd stay at their terrible hotel and come down and surprise you, and you weren't home and they said you'd come here!"
"Yes!" Johnson Boller agreed.
"How could you leave our home, Pudgy-wudgy?" his darling asked reprovingly.
"If I had stayed there another hour without my little chicky-biddy, I'd have shot myself!" said Pudgy-wudgy. "Ask Anthony!" And here he looked at Anthony and demanded: "Ain't we silly? Like a couple of kids!"