"Why, Robert!" protests Marjorie.
"But it is," he goes on. "Haven't I pitied the poor victims who had to go through with it? Think of having to run that gauntlet—morbidly curious old women, silly girls, bored men—and trying to keep step to that confounded dirge. Wedding march, indeed! They make it sound more like the march of the condemned. Tum-tum-te-dum! Ugh! I tell you, Marjorie, I'm not going to have it. Nor any of this stodgy, grewsome fuss. I mean to have a cheerful wedding."
"Humph!" says Marjorie. "I suppose you would like to hop-skip-and-jump down to the altar?"
"Why not?" asks Mr. Robert.
"Don't be absurd, Robert," says she. "You'll be married quite respectably and sanely, as other people are. Anyway, you'll just have to. Mrs. Pulsifer and I are managing the affair, remember."
"Are you?" says Mr. Robert, lettin' out the first growl I'd heard from him in over a week.
I nudges Vee and we exchanges grins.
"The groom always takes on that way," she whispers. "It's the usual thing."
I was sorry for the Boss, too. He'd been havin' such a good time before. But now he goes off with his chin down and his brow all wrinkled up. Course we knew he'd go straight to Elsa and tell her his troubles. But I couldn't see where that was goin' to do him any good. You know how women are about such things. They may be willin' to take a chance along some lines, but when it comes to weddin's and funerals they're stand-patters.
So Sunday afternoon, when I gets a 'phone call from Mr. Robert askin' me to meet him at Miss Hampton's apartment, and he adds that he's decided to duck the whole Crag Oaks proposition and do it his own way, I demands suspicious: