"Then she fall right on her knees, and pray to David Lockwin to forgive her for even thinking he isn't dead.
"Now it was only Wednesday that a duck in this town knocked me out at the primaries--played the identical West Side car-barn game on me! Yes, sir, fetched over 500 street-sweepers to my primaries--machine candidate and all that--oh! he's a jim-dandy!"
"I'm sorry for you, Corkey," the wretched husband says, and thus escapes for a moment from his own terror.
"Yes, it was bad medicine. So I wasn't taking much off anybody. I gets up pretty stiff--this way, and says: 'Good day, Mrs. Lockwin. I guess I can't be no more use to you, nohow.' And just as I was pulling my hat off the peg there comes the very duck that knocked me out--right there! And she chipper to him as sweet as if David Lockwin had been dead twenty years. And he as sweet on her, and right before me! Ugh!"
"Weren't you mistaken, Corkey!" feebly asks the man in the bandages.
"Wasn't I mistaken? Oh, yes! I suppose I can't tell a pair that wants to bite each other! She that was a giving me the limit a minute before was as cunning as a kitten to that rooster. Ugh! it makes me ill!"
"Who is he?" asks David Lockwin.
"He's Mister George Harpwood," cries Corkey bitterly, "and if he aint no snooker, then you needn't tell me I ever see one!"