He turned to John. “John Peerybingle, my service to you. More of my service to your pretty wife. Handsomer every day—and younger!”
“I should be astonished at your paying compliments, Mr. Tackleton,” said Dot, not altogether pleasantly, “but for what I have just heard about you—being engaged to be married.”
“You know all about it, then?”
“I have gotten myself to believe it somehow,” said Dot.
“After a hard struggle, I suppose?”
“Very.”
Tackleton, the toy merchant, was well known in the neighborhood. Many people called him Gruff and Tackleton, the name of the firm when Gruff was Tackleton’s partner. Although Tackleton had bought out Gruff’s interest years before, the name still remained.
It was odd that such a man should have been a toy-maker, for he had no interest in toys whatever. He despised them, and wouldn’t have bought one for the world. The only toys in his shop which he could abide were the ugly ones. Hideous, red-eyed Jacks-in-Boxes, vampire kites, and fiery dragons really did give him some pleasure, for he saw that they scared little children. A very pleasant person, Tackleton! Not the kind of person you would think was going to be married, and to a young wife, too—a beautiful young wife.
He didn’t look much like a bridegroom as he stood in the carrier’s kitchen, with a twist in his dry face, and a screw in his body, and his hat jerked over the bridge of his nose, and his hands tucked down into the bottom of his pockets, and his whole sarcastic, ill-conditioned, self—peering out of one little corner of one little eye, like the concentrated essence of any number of ravens. But a bridegroom he was designed to be.
“In three days’ time—next Thursday—the last day of the first month of the year—is my wedding day,” said Tackleton.