I gets up on my toes at that, and I hadn't no more'n climbed aboard before the machine was tearin' up the macadam again.
"Anybody dyin'," says I, "or does the bargain counter close at five o'clock?"
"Aunt Tillie's eloping," says she, "and if we don't head her off she'll marry an old villain who ought to be in jail."
"Not Mr. Pinckney's Aunt Tillie, the old girl that owns the big place up near Blenmont?" says I.
"That's the one," says Sadie.
"Why she's qualified for an old ladies' home," says I. "You don't mean to say she's got kittenish at her age."
"There's no age limit to that kind of foolishness," says Sadie, "and this looks like a serious attack. We've got to stop it, though, for I promised Pinckney I'd stand guard until he came back from Newport."
I hadn't seen the old girl myself, but I knew her record, and now I got it revised to date. She'd hooked two husbands in her time, but neither of 'em had lasted long. Then she gave it up for a spell and it wa'n't until she was sixty-five that she begins to wear rainbow clothes again, and caper around like one of the squab octet. Lately she'd begun to show signs of wantin' to sit in a shady corner with a man.
Pinckney had discouraged a bald-headed minister, warned off an old bachelor, and dropped strong hints to a couple of widowers that took to callin' frequent for afternoon tea. Then a new one had showed up.
"He's a sticker, too," says Sadie. "I don't know where Aunt Tillie found him, but Pinckney says he's been coming out from the city every other day for a couple of weeks. She's been meeting him at the station and taking him for drives. She says he's some sort of an East Indian priest, and that he's giving her lessons in a new faith cure that she's taking up. To-day, though, after she'd gone off, the housekeeper found that her trunk had been smuggled to the station. Then a note was picked up in her room. It said something about meeting her at the church of St. Paul's-in-the-Wood, at four-thirty, and was signed, 'Your darling Mulli.' Oh, dear, it's almost half-past now! Can't you go any faster, François?"