The Complete Short Stories. O. Hooper Henry

with the sentiments usually depicted toward the sect. I sometimes wish I had,” says old Mack.

      “They’re an adverse study,” says I, “and adapted to points of view. Although they vary in rationale, I have found ’em quite often obviously differing from each other in divergences of contrast.”

      “It seems to me,” goes on Mack, “that a man had better take ’em in and secure his inspirations of the sect when he’s young and so preordained. I let my chance go by; and I guess I’m too old now to go hopping into the curriculum.”

      “Oh, I don’t know,” I tells him. “Maybe you better credit yourself with a barrel of money and a lot of emancipation from a quantity of uncontent. Still, I don’t regret my knowledge of ‘em,” I says. “It takes a man who understands the symptoms and by-plays of womenfolks to take care of himself in this world.”

      We stayed on in Pina because we liked the place. Some folks might enjoy their money with noise and rapture and locomotion; but me and Mack we had had plenty of turmoils and hotel towels. The people were friendly; Ah Sing got the swing of the grub we liked; Mack and Buckle were as thick as two body-snatchers, and I was hitting out a cordial resemblance to “Buffalo Gals, Can’t You Come Out Tonight,” on the banjo.

      One day I got a telegram from Speight, the man that was working on a mine I had an interest in out in New Mexico. I had to go out there; and I was gone two months. I was anxious to get back to Pina and enjoy life once more.

      When I struck the cabin I nearly fainted. Mack was standing in the door; and if angels ever wept, I saw no reason why they should be smiling then.

      That man was a spectacle. Yes; he was worse; he was a spyglass; he was the great telescope in the Lick Observatory. He had on a coat and shiny shoes and a white vest and a high silk hat; and a geranium as big as an order of spinach was spiked onto his front. And he was smirking and warping his face like an infernal storekeeper or a kid with colic.

      “Hello, Andy,” says Mack, out of his face. “Glad to see you back. Things have happened since you went away.”

      “I know it,” says I, “and a sacrilegious sight it is. God never made you that way, Mack Lonsbury. Why do you scarify His works with this presumptuous kind of ribaldry?”

      “Why, Andy,” says he, “they’ve elected me justice of the peace since you left.”

      I looked at Mack close. He was restless and inspired. A justice of the peace ought to be disconsolate and assuaged.

      Just then a young woman passed on the sidewalk; and I saw Mack kind of half snicker and blush, and then he raised up his hat and smiled and bowed, and she smiled and bowed, and went on by.

      “No hope for you,” says I, “if you’ve got the Mary-Jane infirmity at your age. I thought it wasn’t going to take on you. And patent leather shoes! All this in two little short months!”

      “I’m going to marry the young lady who just passed tonight,” says Mack, in a kind of flutter.

      “I forgot something at the postoffice,” says I, and walked away quick.

      I overtook that young woman a hundred yards away. I raised my hat and told her my name. She was about nineteen; and young for her age. She blushed, and then looked at me cool, like I was the snow scene from the “Two Orphans.”

      “I understand you are to be married tonight,” I said.

      “Correct,” says she. “You got any objections?”

      “Listen, sissy,” I begins.

      “My name is Miss Rebosa Redd,” says she in a pained way.

      “I know it,” says I. “Now, Rebosa, I’m old enough to have owed money to your father. And that old, specious, dressed-up, garbled, seasick ptomaine prancing about avidiously like an irremediable turkey gobbler with patent leather shoes on is my best friend. Why did you go and get him invested in this marriage business?”

      “Why, he was the only chance there was,” answers Miss Rebosa.

      “Nay,” says I, giving a sickening look of admiration at her complexion and style of features; “with your beauty you might pick any kind of a man. Listen, Rebosa. Old Mack ain’t the man you want. He was twenty-two when you was nee Reed, as the papers say. This bursting into bloom won’t last with him. He’s all ventilated with oldness and rectitude and decay. Old Mack’s down with a case of Indian summer. He overlooked his bet when he was young; and now he’s suing Nature for the interest on the promissory note he took from Cupid instead of the cash. Rebosa, are you bent on having this marriage occur?”

      “Why, sure I am,” says she, oscillating the pansies on her hat, “and so is somebody else, I reckon.”

      “What time is it to take place?” I asks.

      “At six o’clock,” says she.

      I made up my mind right away what to do. I’d save old Mack if I could. To have a good, seasoned, ineligible man like that turn chicken for a girl that hadn’t quit eating slate pencils and buttoning in the back was more than I could look on with easiness.

      “Rebosa,” says I, earnest, drawing upon my display of knowledge concerning the feminine intuitions of reason— “ain’t there a young man in Pina — a nice young man that you think a heap of?”

      “Yep,” says Rebosa, nodding her pansies— “Sure there is! What do you think! Gracious!”

      “Does he like you?” I asks. “How does he stand in the matter?”

      “Crazy,” says Rebosa. “Ma has to wet down the front steps to keep him from sitting there all the time. But I guess that’ll be all over after tonight,” she winds up with a sigh.

      “Rebosa,” says I, “you don’t really experience any of this adoration called love for old Mack, do you?”

      “Lord! no,” says the girl, shaking her head. “I think he’s as dry as a lava bed. The idea!”

      “Who is this young man that you like, Rebosa?” I inquires.

      “It’s Eddie Bayles,” says she. “He clerks in Crosby’s grocery. But he don’t make but thirty-five a month. Ella Noakes was wild about him once.”

      “Old Mack tells me,” I says, “that he’s going to marry you at six o’clock this evening.”

      “That’s the time,” says she. “It’s to be at our house.”

      “Rebosa,” says I, “listen to me. If Eddie Bayles had a thousand dollars cash — a thousand dollars, mind you, would buy him a store of his own — if you and Eddie had that much to excuse matrimony on, would you consent to marry him this evening at five o’clock?”

      The girl looks at me a minute; and I can see these inaudible cogitations going on inside of her, as women will.

      “A thousand dollars?” says she. “Of course I would.”

      “Come on,” says I. “We’ll go and see Eddie.”

      We went up to Crosby’s store and called Eddie outside. He looked to be estimable and freckled; and he had chills and fever when I made my proposition.

      “At five o’clock?” says he, “for a thousand dollars? Please don’t wake me up! Well, you are the rich uncle retired from the spice business in India! I’ll buy out old Crosby and run the store myself.”

      We went inside and got old man Crosby apart and explained it. I wrote my check for a thousand dollars and handed it to him. If Eddie and Rebosa married each other at five he was to turn the money over to them.

      And then I gave ’em my blessing, and went to wander in the wildwood for a season. I sat on a log and made cogitations on life and old age and the zodiac and the ways of women and all the disorder that goes with