Mrs. Temple shouted back furiously: "How dare you?"
But Mrs. Fosdick was crying to her luscious-eyed mate: "Oh, Arthur, he's not a detective. Embrace me!"
And they embraced, while the robbers looked on aghast at the sudden oblivion they had fallen into. They focussed the attention on themselves again, however, with a ferocious: "Here, hands up!" But they did not see Mr. and Mrs. Fosdick steal a kiss behind their upraised arms, for the robber to whose lot Mallory fell was gloating over his well-filled wallet. Mallory saw it go with fortitude, but noting a piece of legal paper, he said: "Say, old man, you don't want that marriage license, do you?"
The robber handled it as if it were hot—as if he had burned his fingers on some such document once before, and he stuffed it back in Mallory's pocket. "I should say not. Keep it. Turn round."
Meanwhile the other felon turned up another beautiful pile of bills in Dr. Temple's pocket. "Not so worse for a parson," he grinned. "You must be one of them Fifth Avenue sky-shaffures."
And now Mrs. Temple's gentle eyes and voice filled with tears again: "Oh, don't take that. That's the money for his vacation—after thirty long years. Please don't take that."
Her appeals seemed always to find the tender spot of this robber's heart, for he hesitated, and called out: "Shall we overlook the parson's wad, podner?"
"Take it, and shut up, you mollycoddle!" was the answer he got, and the vacation funds joined the old gewgaws.
And now everybody had been robbed but Marjorie. She happened to be at the center of the line, and both men reached her at the same time: "I seen her first," the first one shouted.
"You did not," the other roared.