His father was dead by that time, and looking fur a job in New York, the way he had been doing it, was awful expensive, and he was running short of money. His father had let him spend so much whilst he was alive he was very disappointed to find out he couldn't keep on forever looking fur work that-a-way.
So Colonel Tom says why not come down home into Tennessee with him fur a while, and they will both try and figger out what he orter go to work at.
It was the fall of the year, and they was purty good hunting around there where Colonel Tom lived, and Dave hadn't never been South any, and so he goes. He figgers he better take a good, long vaca-tion, anyhow. Fur if he goes to work that winter or the next spring, and ties up with some job that keeps him in an office, there may be months and months pass by before he has another chance at a vacation. That is the worst part of a job--Ifound that out myself--you never can tell when you are going to get shut of it, once you are fool enough to start in.
In Tennessee he had met Miss Lucy. Which her wedding to Prent McMakin was billed fur to come off about the first of November, jest a month away.
"I don't know whether I ever told you or not,"says the doctor, "but I was engaged to be married myself, Tom, when I went down to your place.
That was what started all the trouble.
"You know engagements are like vaccina-tion--sometimes they take, and sometimes they don't. Of course, I had thought at one time I was in love with this girl I was engaged to. When I found out I wasn't, I should have told her so right away. But I didn't. Ithought that she would get tired of me after a while and turn me loose. I gave her plenty of chances to turn me loose. I wanted her to break the engagement instead of me. But she wouldn't take the hints. She hung on like an Ohio Grand Army veteran to a country post-office.
About half the time I didn't read her letters, and about nineteen twentieths of the time I didn't answer them. They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But it isn't so--it makes them all the fonder of you. I got into the habit of think-ing that while Emma might be engaged to me, Iwasn't engaged to Emma. Not but what Emma was a nice girl, you know, but--"Well, I met Lucy. We fell in love with each other. It just happened. I kept intending to write to the other girl and tell her plainly that everything was off. But I kept postponing it.
It seemed like a deuce of a hard job to tackle.
"But, finally, I did write her. That was the very day Lucy promised to throw Prent McMakin over and marry me. You know how determined all your people were that Lucy should marry McMakin, Tom. They had brought her up with the idea that she was going to, and, of course, she was bored with him for that reason.
"We decided the best plan would be to slip away quietly and get married. We knew it would raise a row. But there was bound to be a row anyhow when they found she intended to marry me instead of McMakin. So we figured we might just as well be away from there.
"We left your place early on the morning of October 31, 1888--do you remember the date, Tom? We took the train for Clarksville, Tennessee, and got there about two o'clock that afternoon.
I suppose you have been in that interesting centre of the tobacco industry. If you have you may remember that the courthouse of Montgomery County is right across the street from the best hotel.
I got a license and a preacher without any trouble, and we were married in the hotel parlour that afternoon. One of the hotel clerks and the county clerk himself were the witnesses.
"We went to Cincinnati and from there to Chicago. There we got rooms out on the South Side--Hyde Park, they called it. And I got me a job. I had some money left, but not enough to buy kohinoors and race-horses with. Beside, I really wanted to get to work--wanted it for the first time in my life. You remember young Clayton in our class? He and some other enterprising citizens had a building and loan association. Such things are no doubt immoral, but I went to work for him.
"We had been in Chicago a week when Lucy wrote home what she had done, and begged for-giveness for being so abrupt about it. At least, I suppose that is what she wrote. It was--""I remember exactly what she wrote," says Colonel Tom.
"I never knew exactly," says the doctor. "The same mail that brought word from you that your grandfather had had some sort of a stroke, as a consequence of our elopement, brought also two letters from Emma. They had been forwarded from New York to Tennessee, and you had for-warded them to Chicago.
"Those letters began the trouble. You see, Ihadn't told Emma when I wrote breaking off the engagement that I was going to get married the next day. And Emma hadn't received my letter, or else had made up her mind to ignore it. Anyhow, those letters were regular love-letters.
"I hadn't really read one of Emma's letters for months. But somehow I couldn't help reading these. I had forgotten what a gift for the expres-sion of sentiment Emma had. She fairly revelled in it, Tom. Those letters were simply writhing with clinging female adjectives. They SQUIRMEDwith affection.
"You may remember that Lucy was a rather jealous sort of a person. Right in the midst of her alarm and grief and self-reproach over her grand-father, and in the midst of my efforts to comfort her, she spied the feminine handwriting on those two letters. I had glanced through them hurriedly, and laid them on the table.
"Tom, I was in bad. The dates on them, you know, were so RECENT. I didn't want Lucy to read them. But I didn't dare to ACT as if I didn't want her to. So I handed them over.
"I suppose--to a bride who had only been married a little more than a week--and who had hurt her grandfather nearly to death in the marry-ing, those letters must have sounded rather odd.
