We sat under a
trellis covered with a grapevine that had borne no grapes in the
memory of man. This vine, however, bore leaves, and these, on that
pleasant summer morning, shielded from us two persons who were in
earnest conversation in the straggling, half-dead flower-garden at the
side of the house.
"I don't want," we heard Mr. Jacobus say, "to enter in no man's
_pry_-vacy; but I do want to know who it may be, like, that I hev in
my house. Now what I ask of _you_, and I don't want you to take it as
in no ways _personal_, is--hev you your merridge-license with you?"
"No," we heard the voice of Mr. Brede reply. "Have you yours?"
I think it was a chance shot; but it told all the same. The Major (he
was a widower) and Mr. Biggle and I looked at each other; and Mr.
Jacobus, on the other side of the grape-trellis, looked at--I don't
know what--and was as silent as we were.
Where is _your_ marriage-license, married reader? Do you know? Four
men, not including Mr. Brede, stood or sat on one side or the other of
that grape-trellis, and not one of them knew where his
marriage-license was.
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