"For how long have you secured a lease?" inquired Wallingford.
"I don't know," replied Blackie reflectively. "She was married the first time for three years, the second for two and the third for one. According to those figures Number Four would have a right to look forward to about six months of married bliss."
"I never was drunk for six months at a time in my life," reflected Wallingford, "but I can see how it could happen. When it's all over, come around to me and I'll lead you to a sanitarium. In the meantime, when am I to have a chance to congratulate the lady?"
"Right away. She is now awaiting yours truly with quite yearning yearns. You know, J. Rufus, your urgent telegram interrupted the howlingest honeymoon that ever turned the main stem into the Great Purple Way. Here's the address. Come over as soon as you have held up the United people, and interrupt us. If you don't find us at home, just go charter a car and roll up and down the avenue until you see the speediest automobile cab outdoors. Chase that, because it's us."
When he called at two o'clock on the following afternoon, however, after having seen Mr. Priestly to their mutual satisfaction, he found them at home just preparing for breakfast, and blinking at the gray world through the mists of a champagne headache. He found Violet Bonnie Daw, seen thus intimately, to be an extremely blond person with a slight tendency toward embonpoint, but her eyes were very blue, and her complexion, even without a make-up, very clear, able even to dominate her charming morning gown of a golden shade that exactly matched her hair. True, if one looked closely there were already traces of coming crow's-feet about the eyes, but one must not look closely; and her very real cordiality made amends for any such slight drawbacks.
"So you're my husband's old pal!" she exclaimed as she shook hands with him warmly. Then she surveyed him from head to foot with an expert appraisement. "You look like a good sport all right," she concluded. "Blackie tells me you just cleaned up a tidy wad of pin money out West, and that you could give Pittsburgh's Best cards and spades on how to spend it. And Blackie's no slouch himself," she rattled on. "My, you ought to have been with us last night."
Blackie grinned dolefully.
"We left a string of long-necked bottles from the Café Boulevard to Churchill's," he stated somberly, but still with quite justifiable pride, "and when we rolled home this morning even the bankers were coming to work."
"It was something fierce," smiled his wife reminiscently, "but I guess we had a good time. Anyhow, it was so hilarious that we can't tell this morning what to take for a pick-me-up."
"That's where I won my first gold medals," boasted Wallingford, chuckling. "What sort of a bar outfit have you?"