“Therein you showed a gleam of real intelligence. Having humored your boy all his life you could not expect to cross him in his first love affair and get away with it. No, sir-ree! The thing to do is to put the skids under Joey and his lady love before they know you know it. Tell me more about her, however, before I begin making skids and skid grease.”
“She is thirty-one years old—”
Cappy Ricks threw up both hands.
“Farewell, O my countrymen!” he murmured.
“She has two children—one by her first husband and one by her second. They're living with her mother. She supports them from the proceeds of her hula dancing.”
“Score a white mark for her, Joe. Is she a good looker?”
“A brunette, Alden, and Joey's Aunt Matilda admitted against her will that she was a beauty. My lawyer tells me, however, that she hasn't an ounce of brains, and proclaims the fact by laughing loudly when there is nothing particularly worth laughing at.”
“I imagine you've had a detective agency investigating her.”
“I have. She has little education and no refinement; her people are very ordinary. Her father is a whitewing in Philadelphia and is separated from her mother, who keeps a boarding house in Muncie, Indiana.”
“I'm afraid, Joe, she won't do for your daughter-in-law,” Cappy Ricks opined slowly. “But don't worry, my boy. You've come all the way from New York to confide in me and get my advice, and somehow I have a sneaking notion you've come to the right shop. If there's anybody calculated to put a crimp in love's young dream, I'm that individual.”