I shouted reassurances to Frosty, who was looking apprehensively back at us.  But it was a facer.  I had never once suspected them of such a thing.

“Well,” I greeted, when we overtook them and could talk comfortably; “this is luck.  When we get across to Pochette’s you can get in with us, Mr. and Mrs. Miller, and add the desired touch of propriety to our wedding.”

They did some staring themselves, then, and Beryl blushed delightfully—­just as she did everything else.  She was growing an altogether bewitching bit of femininity, and I kept thanking my private Providence that I had had the nerve to kidnap her first and take chances on her being willing.  Honest, I don’t believe I’d ever have got her in any other way.

When we stopped at Pochette’s door the girls ran up and tangled their arms around each other and wasted enough kisses to make Frosty and me swear.  And they whispered things, and then laughed about it, and whispered some more, and all we could hear was a gurgle of “You dear!” and the like of that.  Frosty and I didn’t do much; we just looked at each other and grinned.  And it’s long odds we understood each other quite as well as the girls did after they’d whispered and gurgled an hour.

We had an early dinner—­or supper—­and ate fried bacon and stewed prunes—­and right there I couldn’t keep the joke, but had to tell the girls about how Frosty and I had deviled Beryl’s father, that time.  They could see the point, all right, and they seemed to appreciate it, too.

After that, we all talked at once, sometimes; and sometimes we wouldn’t have a thing to say—­times when the girls would look at each other and smile, with their eyes all shiny.  Frosty and I would look at them, and then at each other; and Frosty’s eyes were shiny, too.

Then we went on, with the motor purring love-songs and sliding the miles behind us, while Frosty and Edith cooed in the tonneau behind us, and didn’t thank us to look around or interrupt.  Beryl and I didn’t say much; I was driving as fast as was wise, and sometimes faster.  There was always the chance that the other car would come slithering along on our trail.  Besides, it was enough just to know that this was real, and that Beryl would marry me just as soon as we found a preacher.  There was no incentive to linger along the road.

It yet lacked an hour of sunset when we slid into Osage and stopped before a little goods-box church, with a sample of the same style of architecture chucked close against one side.

We left the girls with the preacher’s wife, and Frosty wrote down our ages—­Beryl was twenty-one, if you’re curious—­and our parents’ names and where we were born, and if we were black or white, and a few other impertinent things which he, having been through it himself, insisted was necessary.  Then he hustled out after the license, while I went over to the dry-goods and jewelry store to get a ring.  I will say that Osage puts up a mighty poor showing of wedding-rings.