“Mrs. Julia hadn’t been able to see anything but the scandal, she being an expert in that line.  So she had started in to persuade Aunt Mollie that it was her sacred duty to be married decently to her companion in crime for forty years.  And Aunt Mollie had been right taken with the idea; in fact, she had entered into it with a social enthusiasm that didn’t seem to Mrs. Julia to have quite enough womanly shame for her dark past in it.  Still, anything to get the guilty couple lawful wedded; and before she left it was all fixed.  Uncle Henry was to make an honest woman of Aunt Mollie as soon as she could get her trousseau ready.

“Me?  I didn’t know whether to laugh or get mad.  I said the original marriage had satisfied the peace and dignity of the state of Washington; and it had done more—­it had even satisfied the neighbours.  So why not let it rest?  But, no, indeedy!  It had never been a marriage in the sight of God and couldn’t be one now.  Facts was facts!  And she talked some more about Aunt Mollie not taking her false position in the proper way.

“It had been Mrs. Julia’s idea to have the preacher come up and commit this ceremony quite furtively, with mebbe a couple of legal witnesses, keeping everything quiet, so as not to have a public scandal.  But nothing like that for the guilty woman!  She was going to have a trousseau and a wedding, with guests and gayety.  She wasn’t taking it the right way at all.  It seemed like she wanted all the scandal there was going.

“‘Really, I can’t understand the creature,’ says Mrs. Julia.  ’She even speaks of a wedding breakfast!  Can you imagine her wishing to flaunt such a thing?’

“It was then I decided to laugh instead of telling this lady a few things she couldn’t of put in an article.  I said Aunt Mollie’s taking it this way showed how depraved people could get after forty years of it; and we must try to humour the old trollop, the main thing being to get her and her debased old Don Juan into a legal married state, even if they did insist on going in with a brass band.  Julia said she was glad I took it this way.

“She came back to my room again that night, after her hair was down.  The only really human thing this lady ever did, so far as I could discover, was to put some of this magic remedy on her hair that restores the natural colour if the natural colour happened to be what this remedy restores it to.  Any way, she now wanted to know if I thought it was right for Aunt Mollie to continue to reside there in that house between now and the time when they would be lawful man and wife.  I said no; I didn’t think it was right.  I thought it was a monstrous infamy and an affront to public morals; but mebbe we better resolve to ignore it and plow a straight furrow, without stopping to pull weeds.  She sadly said she supposed I was right.