Mrs. Temple stared at her gift and gasped: "Great heavens! Your cigars!"
"They'll be such a consolation," Mrs. Wellington explained, "while the Doctor is out with his patients."
Dr. Temple and Mrs. Temple looked at each other in dismay, then at the flask and the cigars, then at the Wellingtons, then they stammered: "Thank you so much," and sank back, stupefied.
Wellington stared at his wife: "Lucretia, are you sincere?"
"Jimmie, I promise you I'll never smoke another cigar."
"My love!" he cried, and seized her hand. "You know I always said you were a queen among women, Lucretia."
She beamed back at him: "And you always were the prince of good fellows, Jimmie." Then she almost blushed as she murmured, almost shyly: "May I pour your coffee for you again this morning?"
"For life," he whispered, and they moved up the aisle, arm in arm, bumping from seat to seat and not knowing it.
When Mrs. Whitcomb, seated in the dining-car, saw Mrs. Little Jimmie pour Mr. Little Jimmie's coffee, she choked on hers. She vowed that she would not permit those odious Wellingtons to make fools of her and her Sammy. She resolved to telegraph Sammy that she had changed her mind about divorcing him, and order him to take the first train West and meet her half-way on her journey home.