and fright was the appearance of the stout Mr. Channing Lamont who took the center of the stage at the same minute that Scandrel used his feet to stand on again. Lamont swept the place with his glance and looked at Ottie, his face two shades redder than scarlet.
“So this is the manner in which you told me I could rely on you!” Lamont thundered. “You scoundrel, my sister in Rosewood wrote me to say my daughter Alice has been seeing Van Riker every day! Is this the way”
“The summer weather has affected your intelligence!” Ottie croaked. “He ain't been out of my sight for two minutes in two weeks. Look at him over there. Does he look as though he's been carrying on the love affairs?”
Lamont wheeled around and glared in the direction Ottie indicated. Then his mouth opened slightly and his eyes widened.
“You imbecile, that isn't Van Riker—that's Jepson, his valet!”
At this the young man who had knocked McFinn for a goal took off the brass knuckles he had been wearing, dropped them carelessly back in his pocket, and laughed.
“Perhaps I had better explain,” he said to Lamont and Scandrel jointly. “When I told Alice I intended to come up here she told me about the characters in a magazine story she had been reading. It sounded good. So I decided that I'd be Jepson, the valet, and that Jepson would be Tarkington van Riker temporarily. Get the point? The idea worked splendidly but it had one flaw in it. That is, Alice and I discovered we did not care for each other as much as we had imagined and so you haven't any cause for further worry, Mr. Lamont. Eh—as a matter of fact a Miss Biggs and myself ran over to Tarrytown this afternoon and were married there.”
He turned to the blushing Amabel as Alice Lamont giggled.
“And oh, dad,” she cooed, using her soulful eyes, “I know you are going to be frightfully angry with me but I suppose I might as well tell you now and have it over with. I'm engaged, too. It was simply a case of love at first sight with us both. You always objected to handsome men but now you won't have any cause for complaint. He's so sweet but so homely and”
“Stop right there!” Channing Lamont roared. “Who is this man? Where is he?”
The brown-haired Alice nodded at the motionless figure of Dangerous Dave McFinn.
“Over there—under that table, dad!” she giggled again. “No, I'm not a bit worried either. He's the strongest thing. And he told me a knock-out is part of his business!”
Smile that one away!
Fifteen minutes more or less later, as Scandrel and myself passed the tent of the fortune teller in the main room, Looie Pitz, wearing an expression like that of a bride-to-be on her wedding morn, came out, rubbing his hands.
“You boys back again?” he chuckled. “Say, listen. I just now got my palm read and the news couldn't be better. Lady Mysteria tells me that I'm going to get the surprise of my life right away. And that ain't all. Guess what else she said?”
“What else did she say?” Ottie mumbled.
Pitz pulled down his cuffs.
“That somebody is going to steal my bicycle! Ain't it true—it never rains but it gets wet!”
What's your wave length?
Another Montanye story in an early issue.
WORTH CONSIDERING
WHEN Weber and Fields had their famous reconciliation after their long and equally famous break-up of partnership, they decided to employ for their show all the members of their old company that they could find. When they were all lined up, one of the chorus girls struck Joe Weber as being much older than any of their former singers could possibly be.
“Say,” he asked William Raymond Sill, the man who had got the assemblage together, “does that one belong here? Was she in our old company?”
“No, she wasn't,” Sill said. “A newspaper man asked me to give her a trial.”
“What newspaper man?” asked Weber. “Horace Greeley?”
