“Naturally I told her to come with me to Albany. And then of course I couldn’t leave her there to hunt up her connection alone, and have to waste time waiting, maybe. So I arranged for a stop at the town she was going to, and then,” Jasper J. Morton flushed shamefacedly, “when nobody met her, we side-tracked our outfit and I drove up to the hotel with her. She was barely in time, the doctor said. They’d been married just a year to-day, she told me. I guess if ever you two are in a tight place you’ll be thankful to anybody who misses his boy’s wedding to help you out. But I wouldn’t have those reporters out there know what a soft-hearted old auntie I’m getting to be, not for anything. Miss B. A., you’ll be the ruin of me yet, with all your theories about looking out for the other fellow.”
“We’ll be married all over again if you’d like us to, Father Morton,” Babe offered gallantly, although she had assured John after the ceremony that she wouldn’t ever have promised to marry him if she bad realized the queer feelings you have while you are doing it.
But Mr. Morton refused her generous offer. “I’m satisfied,” he said, “as long as John’s got you for a wife and I’ve got you for a daughter. My seeing it done wouldn’t have made any big difference to you——”
“Oh, yes, it would,” broke in Babe kindly.
“Not the difference it made to that poor little crying lady to see her husband,” pursued Mr. Morton. Then he chuckled merrily as Babbie appeared, looking very angry and quite absurdly pretty in consequence. “Were those reporters inquisitive?” he demanded.
“They did think you stayed away on purpose,” declared Babbie indignantly. “As if any one could possibly disapprove of Babe! I told them you were just as fond of her as John is. And now they’re discussing what effect your being late will have on Wall Street. They said to tell you that, and to ask you please to come out and talk to them, if you didn’t want the market to collapse to-morrow like a pricked balloon. They laughed right in my face when I said it was a ‘private affair’ that kept you.”
“I’ll settle them,” said Jasper J. Morton, and went off muttering something about “those chimpanzees that run the newspapers.”
Whereat John looked relieved. “First time he’s acted natural to-night,” he said. “If he hadn’t gone up in the air pretty soon, I should have telegraphed his doctor. But now we can start on our wedding trip feeling perfectly safe about him.”
Madeline couldn’t come to the wedding. She had sent her play to Miss Dwight’s manager, and now she was exerting all her ingenuity to get a personal interview with Miss Dwight herself.
“Her present play isn’t going well, and she’s as cross as a bear,” Madeline wrote Babe. “Dick Blake knows her—had dinner with her just before I came down. She said that night that she believed in her play, and if it failed she should lose all faith in American audiences, buy a lake in Maine and a river in Florida, and retire from the stage. Dick says she will never do that, but he thinks it’s no use talking my play to her in her present mood. He got the manager of the Lyric Repertoire Theatre to say he’d read the manuscript, and now he’s perfectly furious with me because I persist with Miss Dwight. ‘Agatha or nobody’ is my war-cry! If she’d only read my play or talk to me, one or the other, I know there wouldn’t be any more trouble. That play fits her like a glove, and it will take—oh, how it will take!”