“Come in, dear, and shut it,” said Mary Lou, sighing.  “Sit down, Sue.”

“What is it?” said Susan uneasily.

“Oh, Sue—–!” began Virginia, and burst into tears.

“Now, now, darling!” Mary Lou patted her sister’s hand.

“Auntie—­” Susan asked, turning pale.

“No, Ma’s all right,” Mary Lou reassured her, “and there’s nothing really wrong, Sue.  But Georgie—­Georgie, dear, she’s married to Joe O’Connor!  Isn’t it dreadful?”

“But Ma’s going to have it annulled,” said Virginia instantly.

“Married!” Susan gasped.  “You mean engaged!”

“No, dear, married,” Mary Lou repeated, in a sad, musical voice.  “They were married on Monday night—­”

“Tell me!” commanded Susan, her eyes flashing with pleasurable excitement.

“We don’t know much, Sue dear.  Georgie’s been acting rather odd and she began to cry after breakfast this morning, and Ma got it out of her.  I thought Ma would faint, and Georgie just screamed. I kept calling out to Ma to be calm—­” Susan could imagine the scene.  “So then Ma took Georgie upstairs, and Jinny and I worked around, and came up here and made up this room.  And just before lunch Ma came up, and—­she looked chalk-white, didn’t she, Jinny?”

“She looked-well, as white as this spread,” agreed Virginia.

“Well, but what accounts for it!” gasped Susan.  “Is Georgie crazy!  Joe O’Connor!  That snip!  And hasn’t he an awful old mother, or someone, who said that she’d never let him come home again if he married?”

“Listen, Sue!—­You haven’t heard half.  It seems that they’ve been engaged for two months—­”

“They have!”

“Yes.  And on Monday night Joe showed Georgie that he’d gotten the license, and they got thinking how long it would be before they could be married, what with his mother, and no prospects and all, and they simply walked into St. Peter’s and were married!”

“Well, he’ll have to leave his mother, that’s all!” said Susan.

“Oh, my dear, that’s just what they quarreled about!  He won’t.”

“He—­won’t?”

“No, if you please!  And you can imagine how furious that made Georgie!  And when Ma told us that, she simply set her lips,—­you know Ma!  And then she said that she was going to see Father Birch with Georgie this afternoon, to have it annulled at once.”

“Without saying a word to Joe!”

“Oh, they went first to Joe’s.  Oh, no, Joe is perfectly willing.  It was, as Ma says, a mistake from beginning to end.”

“But how can it be annulled, Mary Lou?” Susan asked.

“Well, I don’t understand exactly,” Mary Lou answered coloring.  “I think it’s because they didn’t go on any honeymoon—­they didn’t set up housekeeping, you know, or something like that!”

“Oh,” said Susan, hastily, coloring too.  “But wouldn’t you know that if any one of us did get married, it would be annulled!” she said disgustedly.  The others both began to laugh.