And I've never been sorry since, either.
[CHAPTER XVI—I PAY MY OTHER BET]
'Twas June, and Mary and I were in New York together, on our honeymoon. We'd been married, quietly, by the same parson that tied the knot for Jim and Georgianna, and Georgianna and Jim had been on hand at the ceremony. We was cal'latin' to stop in New York a few days, then go to Washington, and from there to Chicago, and from there to California or the Yellerstone, or anywhere that seemed good to us at the time. I'd waited fifty years for my weddin' tour and I didn't intend to let dollars and cents cut much figger, so far as regulatin' the limits of the cruise was concerned. Jim Henry and the clerk, who'd been swore in as substitute assistant, believed they could run the store and post-office while we were gone.
Mary and I were walkin' down Broadway together. I'd told her I had an errand to do and asked her if she wanted to come along. She said she did and we were walkin' down Broadway, as I said, when all at once I pulled up short.
"What is it?" asked Mary, lookin' to see what had run across my bows to bring me up into the wind so sudden.
"Nothin' serious," says I; "but, unless my eyesight is goin' back on me, this shop we're in front of is what I've been huntin' for."
She looked at the shop I was p'intin' at. The window was full of hats, straw ones mainly.
"Why!" says she, "it's a hat store, isn't it? You don't need a new hat, Zebulon, do you?"
"You bet I do!" says I, chucklin'. "I need just as much hat as there is. Come in and watch me buy it."
I could see she was puzzled, but she was more so after I got into the store. A slick-lookin', but pretty condescendin' young clerk marched up to us and says he: