"I know," said Patty, "that he never will find any one--but you--to put
up with his eccentricities."

"And then, as if abandoning him were not bad enough, I go and maim the
poor beggar: blind him temporarily--permanently, if he is not taken care
of--and disfigure him beyond all description. Honestly, Patty, you never
saw anything like him."

"I know," said she, "I know. A pair of black eyes."

"Black!" he cried, "why, they're all the colors of the rainbow and two
more beside, as the story-book says. All the way from his hair to his
mustache he is one lurid sunset. I don't want to minimize this thing. It
has only one redeeming feature: he will be a complete disguise. No
amount of rice or ribbon could counteract his sinister companionship. No
bridal suspicions could live in the light of it. Doesn't that thought
help?".

The conversation wandered into personalities and back again, as a
conversation may three days before a wedding, but Patty was not entirely
won over to Hawley's view of his responsibility for having with
unprecedented dexterity and precision planted a smashing "right" on the
bridge of his friend's nose in the course of an amicable "bout."

"And the oculist chap says," Winthrop urged, "that he simply must not be
allowed to use his eyes. I'm the only one who takes any interest in him
or has any control over him, and to abandon him now would be an awful
responsibility. Can't you see that, dear? If we stay at home to take
care of him he will understand why we're doing it, and he'd vanish. Do