That was a glorious honeymoon! They traveled from one gay summer resort to another, and when Fannie expressed the first hint of fatigue, Wallingford, who had grown to worship her, promptly provided her with complete and unique rest, by taking her to some one of the smaller inland cities of the type which he loved, installing her in a comfortable hotel, and living, for a week or so, a quiet, lazy existence consisting largely of mere eating and sleeping, and just enough exercise to keep in good health. In all this time there was not one jarring thought, one troubled moment, nor one hint of a shadow. J. Rufus took his wife into all sorts of unique experiences, full of life and color and novelty, having a huge pride in her constant wonder and surprise.

It happened, while upon one of these resting sojourns, [Pg 307]that they one night paused on the edge of a crowd which stood gaping at a patent medicine faker. Suddenly recognizing an old acquaintance in the picturesque orator with the sombrero and the shoulder-length gray hair, Wallingford drew closer.

Standing behind the “doctor,” upon the seat of his carriage where the yellow light of a gasolene torch flared full upon it, was a gaudy, life-size anatomical chart, and with this as bait for his moths he was extolling the virtues of Quagg’s Peerless Sciatacata.

“Here, my friends,” he declared, unfolding one of the many hinged flaps of the gory chart, “you bee-hold the intimate relation of the stomach with all the inn-ternal organs, and above all with the blood, which, pumped by the heart through these abb-sorbing membranes, takes up that priceless tonic, Doctor Quagg’s Peerless Sciatacata. This, acting dii-rectly upon the red corpuscles of the vital fluid, stimm-ulates the circulation and carries its germ-destroying properties to every atom of the human frame, casting off imm-purities, clean-sing the syst-em, bringing ee-lasticity to the footsteps, hope to the heart, the ruddy glow of bounding health to pale cheeks, and the sparkle of new life to tired and jaded eyes!”

Wallingford turned to his wife with a chuckle,

[Pg 308]

“Just stand here a minute, Fannie,” said he. “I must wade in and speak to the old scout. We stopped a week at the same hotel over in New Jersey and got as chummy as two cell-mates.”

Fannie smiled doubtfully in response, and watched her husband with a slight trace of concern as he forced his way through the crowd and up to the wheel of the carriage.

“How are you, Doctor?” said he, holding up his plump palm. “Where are you stopping?”

The doctor’s wink at J. Rufus was scarcely perceptible to that large young gentleman himself, much less to the bystanders, as with professional gravity he reached down for a hearty handshake.

“Benson House. Come around and see me to-morrow morning.” Then, with added gravity and in a louder voice: “I scarcely knew you, friend, you are so changed. How many bottles of the Sciatacata was it you took?”

“Four,” replied J. Rufus clearly, with not even a twinkle in his eye.

“Only four bottles,” declaimed Doctor Quagg. “My friends, this is one of my most marvelous cures. When I met this gentleman in Columbus, Ohio, he was a living skeleton, having suffered for [Pg 309]years from sciatic rheumatism. He bought from me one night at my carriage, just as he is standing now, six bottles of the Peerless Sciatacata. He took but four bottles, and look at him to-day!”

With one accord they looked. There was some slight tittering among them at first, but the dignity and gravity with which the towering J. Rufus, hale and hearty and in the pink of condition, withstood that inspection, checked all inclination to levity. Moreover, he was entirely too prosperous-looking to be a “capper.”

“I owe you my life, Doctor,” said Wallingford gratefully. “I never travel without those other two bottles of the Sciatacata,” and with the air of a debt of honor paid, he pressed back through the crowd to the sidewalk.

His wife was laughing, yet confused.

“I don’t see how you can make yourself so conspicuous,” she protested in a low voice.

“Why not?” he laughed. “We public characters must boost one another.”

“And the price,” they heard the doctor declaiming, “is only one dollar per bottle, or six for five dollars, guar-an-teed not only to drive sciatic rheumatism from the sys-tem, but to cure the most [Pg 310]ob-stin-ate cases of ague, Bright’s disease, cat-a-lepsy, coughs, colds, cholera, dys-pepsia, ery-sip-e-las, fever and chills, gas-tritis”—

“And so on down to X Y Z, etc.,” commented Wallingford as they walked away.

His wife looked up at him curiously.

“Jim, did you honestly take four bottles of that medicine?” she wanted to know.

“Take it?” he repeated in amazement. “Certainly not! It isn’t meant for wise people to take. It wouldn’t do them any good.”

“It wouldn’t do anybody any good,” she decided with a trace of contempt.

“Guess again,” he advised her. “That dope has cured a million people that had nothing the matter with ’em.”

At the Hotel Deriche in the adjoining block they turned into the huge, garishly decorated dining-room for their after-theater supper. They had been in the town only two days, but the head waiter already knew to come eagerly to meet them, to show them to the best table in the room, and to assign them the best waiter; also the head waiter himself remained to take the order, to suggest a delicate, new dish and to name over, at Wallingford’s [Pg 311]solicitation, the choice wines in the cellar that were not upon the wine-list.

This little formality over, Wallingford looked about him complacently. A pale gentleman with a jet-black beard bowed to him from across the room.

“Doctor Lazzier,” observed Wallingford to his wife. “Most agreeable chap and has plenty of money.”

He bent aside a little to see past his wife’s hat, and exchanged a suave salutation with a bald-headed young man who was with two ladies and who wore a dove-gray silk bow with his evening clothes.

“Young Corbin,” explained Wallingford, “of the Corbin and Paley department store. He had about two dollars a week spending money till his father died, and now he and young Paley are turning social flip-flaps at the rate of twenty a minute. He belongs to the Mark family and he’s great pals with me. Looks good for him, don’t it?”

“Jim,” she said in earnest reproval, “you mustn’t talk that way.”

“Of course I’m only joking,” he returned. “You know I promised you I’d stick to the straight and [Pg 312]narrow. I’ll keep my word. Nothing but straight business for me hereafter.”............