In two bodies they were, with
the grosgrain carpet and cops with clubs between. They crowded like
cattle, they fought, they pressed and surged and swayed and trampled
one another to see a bit of a girl in a white veil acquire license to
go through a man's pockets while he sleeps.
But the hour for the wedding came and went, and the bride and
bridegroom came not. And impatience gave way to alarm and alarm
brought about search, and they were not found. And then two big
policemen took a hand and dragged out of the furious mob of onlookers
a crushed and trampled thing, with a wedding ring in its vest pocket
and a shredded and hysterical woman beating her way to the carpet's
edge, ragged, bruised and obstreperous.
William Pry and Violet Seymour, creatures of habit, had joined in the
seething game of the spectators, unable to resist the overwhelming
desire to gaze upon themselves entering, as bride and bridegroom, the
rose-decked church.
Rubber will out.
IX
ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS
"One thousand dollars," repeated Lawyer Tolman, solemnly and
severely, "and here is the money."
Young Gillian gave a decidedly amused laugh as he fingered the thin
package of new fifty-dollar notes.
"It's such a confoundedly awkward amount," he explained, genially, to
the lawyer. "If it had been ten thousand a fellow might wind up with
a lot of fireworks and do himself credit. Even fifty dollars would
have been less trouble."
"You heard the reading of your uncle's will," continued Lawyer
Tolman, professionally dry in his tones.
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