Excuse Me!

  CHAPTER VII

  THE MASKED MINISTER

  Being an angel must have this great advantage at least, that one maysit in the grandstand overlooking the earth and enjoy the ludicrousblunders of that great blind man's buff we call life.

  This night, if any angels were watching Chicago, the Mallory mix-upmust have given them a good laugh, or a good cry--according to theirnatures.

  Here were Mallory and Marjorie, still merely engaged, bitterlyregretting their inability to get married and to continue theirjourney together. There in the car were the giggling conspiratorspreparing a bridal mockery for their sweet confusion.

  Then the angels might have nudged one another and said:

  "Oh, it's all right now. There goes a minister hurrying to their verycar. Mallory has the license in his pocket, and here comes the parson.Hooray!"

  And then the angelic cheer must have died out as the one great hurrahof a crowded ball-ground is quenched in air when the home team'svitally needed home run swerves outside the line and drops useless asa stupid foul ball.

  In a shabby old hack, were two of the happiest runaways that eversought a train. They were not miserable like the young couple in thetaxicab. They were white-haired both. They had been married for thirtyyears. Yet this was their real honeymoon, their real elopement.

  The little woman in the timid gray bonnet clapped her hands andtittered like a schoolgirl.

  "Oh, Walter, I can't believe we're really going to leave Ypsilanti fora while. Oh, but you've earned it after thirty years of being apreacher."

  "Hush. Don't let me hear you say the awful word," said the little oldman in the little black hat and the close-fitting black bib. "I'm sotired of it, Sally, I don't want anybody on the train to know it."

  "They can't help guessing it, with your collar buttoned behind."

  And then the amazing minister actually dared to say, "Here's where Ichange it around." What's more, he actually did it. Actually took offhis collar and buttoned it to the front. The old carriage seemedalmost to rock with the earthquake of the deed.

  "Why, Walter Temple!" his wife exclaimed. "What would they say inYpsilanti?"

  "They'll never know," he answered, defiantly.

  "But your bib?" she said.

  "I've thought of that, too," he cried, as he whipped it off andstuffed it into a handbag. "Look, what I've bought." And he dangledbefore her startled eyes a long affair which the sudden light from apassing lamppost revealed to be nothing less than a flaring red tie.

  The little old lady touched it to make sure she was not dreaming it.Then, omitting further parley with fate, she snatched it away, put itround his neck, and, since her arms were embracing him, kissed himtwice before she knotted the ribbon into a flaming bow. She sat backand regarded the vision a moment, then flung her arms around him andhugged him till he gasped:

  "Watch out-watch out. Don't crush my cigars."

  "Cigars! Cigars!" she echoed, in a daze.

  And then the astounding husband produced them in proof.

  "Genuine Lillian Russells--five cents straight."

  "But I never saw you smoke."

  "Haven't taken a puff since I was a young fellow," he grinned, wagginghis head. "But now it's my vacation, and I'm going to smoke up."

  She squeezed his hand with an earlier ardor: "Now you're the oldWalter Temple I used to know."

  "NOW IT'S MY VACATION, AND I'M GOING TO SMOKE UP"....]

  "Sally," he said, "I've been traveling through life on a half-fareticket. Now I'm going to have my little fling. And you brace up, too,and be the old mischievous Sally I used to know. Aren't you glad to beaway from those sewing circles and gossip-bees, and----"

  "Ugh! Don't ever mention them," she shuddered. Then she, too, felt atinge of recurring springtide. "If you start to smoking, I think I'lltake up flirting once more."

  He pinched her cheek and laughed. "As the saying is, go as far as youdesire and I'll leave the coast clear."

  He kept his promise, too, for they were no sooner on the train andsnugly bestowed in section five, than he was up and off.

  "Where are you going?" she asked.

  "To the smoking-room," he swaggered, brandishing a dangerous lookingcigar.

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

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

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

  And Sally herself was busy disguising herself, loosening up her haircoquettishly, smiling the primness out of the set corners of her mouthand even--let the truth be told at all costs--even passing apink-powdered puff over her pale cheeks with guilty surreptition.

  Thus arrayed she was soon joining the conspirators bedecking the bowerfor the expected bride and groom. She was the youngest and mostmischievous of the lot. She felt herself a bride again, and vowed toprotect this timid little wife to come from too much hilarity at thehands of the conspirators.