Excuse Me! Part 10

"Oh, Walter," she snickered, "I feel like a young runaway."

"You look like one. Be careful not to let anybody know that you're a"--he lowered his voice--"an old preacher's wife."

"I'm as ashamed of it as you are," she whispered. Then he threw her a kiss and a wink. She threw him a kiss and winked, too. And he went along the aisle eyeing his cigar gloatingly. As he entered the smoking-room, lighted the weed and blew out a great puff with a sigh of rapture, who could have taken him, with his feet c.o.c.ked up, and his red tie rakishly askew, for a minister?

And Sally herself was busy disguising herself, loosening up her hair coquettishly, smiling the primness out of the set corners of her mouth and even--let the truth be told at all costs--even pa.s.sing a pink-powdered puff over her pale cheeks with guilty surrept.i.tion.

Thus arrayed she was soon joining the conspirators bedecking the bower for the expected bride and groom. She was the youngest and most mischievous of the lot. She felt herself a bride again, and vowed to protect this timid little wife to come from too much hilarity at the hands of the conspirators.

CHAPTER VIII

A MIXED PICKLE

Mrs. Whitcomb had almost blushed when she had murmured to Lieutenant Hudson:

"I should think the young couple would have preferred a stateroom."

And Mr. Hudson had flinched a little as he explained:

"Yes, of course. We tried to get it, but it was gone."

It was during the excitement over the decoration of the bridal section, that the stateroom-tenants slipped in un.o.bserved.

First came a fluttering woman whose youthful beauty had a certain hue of experience, saddening and wisering. The porter brought her in from the station-platform, led her to the stateroom's concave door and pa.s.sed in with her luggage. But she lingered without, a Peri at the gate of Paradise. When the porter returned to bow her in, she s.h.i.+vered and hesitated, and then demanded:

"Oh, Porter, are you sure there's n.o.body else in there?"

The porter chuckled, but humored her panic.

"I ain't seen n.o.body. Shall I look under the seat?"

To his dismay, she nodded her head violently. He rolled his eyes in wonderment, but returned to the stateroom, made a pretense of examination, and came back with a face full of rea.s.surance. "No'm, they's n.o.body there. Take a mighty small-size burglar to squeeje unda that baid--er--berth. No'm, n.o.body there."

"Oh!"

The gasp was so equivocal that he made bold to ask:

"Is you pleased or disappointed?"

The mysterious young woman was too much agitated to rebuke the impudence. She merely sighed: "Oh, porter, I'm so anxious."

"I'm not--now," he muttered, for she handed him a coin.

"Porter, have you seen anybody on board that looks suspicious?"

"Evvabody looks suspicious to me, Missy. But what was you expecting--especial?"

"Oh, porter, have you seen anybody that looks like a detective in disguise?"

"Well, they's one man looks 's if he was disguised as a balloon, but I don't believe he's no slooch-hound."

"Well, if you see anything that looks like a detective and he asks for Mrs. Fosd.i.c.k----"

"Mrs. What-d.i.c.k?"

"Mrs. Fosd.i.c.k! You tell him I'm not on board." And she gave him another coin.

"Ya.s.sum," said the porter, lingering willingly on such fertile soil.

"I'll tell him Mrs. Fosd.i.c.k done give me her word she wasn't on bode."

"Yes!--and if a woman should ask you."

"What kind of a woman?"

"The hideous kind that men call handsome."

"Oh, ain't they hideous, them handsome women?"

"Well, if such a woman asks for Mrs. Fosd.i.c.k--she's my husband's first wife--but of course that doesn't interest you."

"No'm--yes'm."

"If she comes--tell her--tell her--oh, what shall we tell her?"

The porter rubbed his thick skull: "Lemme see--we might say you--I tell you what we'll tell her: we'll tell her you took the train for New York; and if she runs mighty fast she can just about ketch it."

"Fine, fine!" And she rewarded his genius with another coin. "And, porter." He had not budged. "Porter, if a very handsome man with luscious eyes and a soulful smile asks for me----"

"I'll th'ow him off the train!"

"Oh, no--no!--that's my husband--my present husband. You may let him in. Now is it all perfectly clear, porter?"

"Oh, ya.s.sum, clear as clear." Thus guaranteed she entered the stateroom, leaving the porter alone with his problem. He tried to work it out in a semi-audible mumble: "Lemme see! If your present husband's absent wife gits on bode disguised as a handsome hideous woman I'm to throw him--her--off the train and let her--him--come in--oh, ya.s.sum, you may rely on me." He bowed and held out his hand again. But she was gone. He shuffled on into the car.

He had hardly left the little s.p.a.ce before the stateroom when a handsome man with luscious eyes, but without any smile at all, came slinking along the corridor and tapped cautiously on the door. Silence alone answered him at first, then when he had rapped again, he heard a m.u.f.fled:

"Go away. I'm not in."

He put his lips close and softly called: "Edith!"

At this Sesame the door opened a trifle, but when he tried to enter, a hand thrust him back and a voice again warned him off. "You musn't come in."

"But I'm your husband."

"That's just why you musn't come in." The door opened a little wider to give him a view of a downcast beauty moaning: