Page:Earl Derr Biggers - Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913).djvu/125

Rh She no longer wore coat and hat, and the absence of the latter revealed a glory of golden hair that became instantly a rival to the sunshine in that drear bare room.

"No, Peters," she said, "you mustn't go. We couldn't permit it. Mamma and I will go."

She continued to smile at the obviously dazzled Peters. Suddenly he spoke in a determined tone:

"No—don't do that I'll stay." Then he turned to Magee, and continued for that gentleman's ear alone: "Dog-gone it, we're all alike. We resolve and resolve, and then one of them looks at us, and it's all forgot. I had a friend who advertised for a wife, leastways, he was a friend until he advertised. He got ninety-two replies, seventy of 'em from married men advising against the step. 'I'm cured,' he says to me. 'Not for me.' Did he keep his word? No. A week after he married a widow just to see if what the seventy said was true. I'm mortal. I hang around the buzz-saw. If you give me a little money, I'll go down to the village and buy the provisions for lunch."