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 thing fixed up for us to clear out o' here day after to-morrow. I suppose that's agreeable to you, too?"

Laurence understood that Tinker was putting off their inevitable topic as long as possible; but now as an actual supplicant the young man had more courage than he had shown as a prospective one. "It will be agreeable to me if what I have to say is agreeable to you, Mr. Tinker."

Tinker sighed heavily and audibly;—it was a groan. "Oh, murder!" he said. "I suppose we might as well get down to it. Of course Babe's told me what you want to talk to me about. Well, sir, it isn't so awful agreeable; no, sir, it's not. When you come right down to it, it's not so agreeable."

The applicant bit his lip. "I don't know that I"

"Listen!" Tinker said; and he leaned forward earnestly toward the young man. "Look here! I haven't got a word to say against your character or your family. Babe's told me everything about that and how your father was a college professor and all; and I'll admit right now, when we started on this trip I had a kind of hope that something like this might happen. Not that I wanted such a thing, you get me; but I mean on her account. She thought she