Spoof sprang to his feet. "Oh, by Jove, how wonderful! What lucky dogs! Your pardon, ladies, that my first word was to them; I fear my envy out-weighed my good manners—if I have any left. A bachelor's shack is not exactly a school of polite behavior. It is my visits at Fourteen which have saved me from becoming quite a savage. I—I feel that I should make a speech."
He was as good as his word. Mounting a chair he gave us a bantering dissertation on the joys and perils of married life, to which we listened with much seriousness. But underneath, and running through his words, was something which all his banter did not hide. Spoof was playing the game, but I wondered how many little yellow devils were skewering his heart.
The practical part of it was Spoof's ready offer of his help in arranging details. The problems of securing the services of a minister and buying the marriage licenses demanded attention. Even so ethereal a thing as marriage cannot entirely escape the humdrum of the material, but it was a time when we felt strangely incapacitated for the common-place. We were flying too high for earth worms; larks or eagles were our prey.
Jack suggested that we had thought of driving to the nearest railway station, some thirty miles distant, for the ceremony. We understood that a minister was located there and that the young man who ran the pool room was intrusted with the duty of issuing marriage licenses. He carried a small stock of tobacco as an auxiliary to his pool business and a small stock of jewelry as an auxiliary to his tobacco business and a small stock of wedding licenses as an auxiliary to his jewelry business.
"It would take you two days to make that trip with old Buck and Bright," Spoof protested. "Perhaps more; they're soft with being stall-fed and may quit altogether on the road, and you may not find a convenient armful of hay with which to fix them. Fancy having to send word, 'Wedding postponed on account of the indisposition of Buck and Bright!' No, you must leave all these things to me. You boys are too busy with—much more important business—to be worried about details."
Spoof made his plans joyously. If he was not happy at heart over the fact that Jean was to marry me no one could have read it in his face. He would have a minister, he would have licenses, he would have wedding rings—leave it all to him.
A week later he came puffing across the crusted prairie, not in leggings this time, but in broad-soled Canadian felts.
"Admire my scows," he commanded, as he hove them into view. "Twin schooners of the deep—"
"Travelling in ballast," Jack interrupted.
"Nay, laden with good tidings. Ah, there she breaks out a line of signals," and Spoof started to wig-wag a message which none of us could decipher.