The Tale of the Tangled Telegram by Wilbur D. Nesbit.

"Now look, Mr. Putnam, I can come to you and ask you for her, and it's the same thing."

"Not by a hundred miles, my boy. If I told Lucy you had said that, she wouldn't be at home next time you called. The trouble with you is that you don't understand women. You've got to talk direct to them."

Jimmy looked hopelessly out of the window.

"No; what you say to me and what I say to you hasn't any more to do with you and Lucy than if you were selling me a bill of goods. I like you, Jimmy, and I've watched your career so far with interest, and I look for great things from you in the future, and that's why I say to you to go ahead and get Lucy, and good luck to you both."

Mr. Putnam took up some papers from his desk and pretended to be studying them, but from the tail of his eye he gathered the gloom that was settling over Jimmy's face. The elder man enjoyed the situation.

"Well, Mr. Putnam," Jimmy asked, "why can't you just tell Lucy for me that I have asked you, and that you say it's all right? Then when I go to see her next time, it'll all be arranged and understood."

"Le' me see. Didn't I read a poem or something at school about some one who hadn't sand enough to propose to a girl and who got another man to ask her? But it wasn't her own father. Why, Jimmy, if you haven't courage enough to propose to a girl, what do you suppose will be your finish if she marries you? A married man has to have spunk."

"I've got the spunk all right, but you understand how I feel."

"Sure! Let me give you some advice. When you propose to a girl, you don't have to come right out and ask her to marry you."

Jimmy caught at the straw.

"You don't?" he asked.

"Certainly not. There's half a dozen ways of letting her know that you want her. Usually-always, I may say-she knows it anyway, and unless she wants you she'll not let you tell her so. But if I wanted a short, sharp 'No' from a girl, I'd get her father to ask her to marry me."

"Then you mean that I've got to ask her myself?"

"To be sure."

"I can't do it, Mr. Putnam; I can't."

"Write it."

"Why, I'd feel as if the postman and everybody else knew it."

"Telephone."

"Jim Minton, I'm disgusted with you. I thought you were a young man with some enterprise, but if you lose your courage over such an every-day affair as proposing to a girl-"

"But men don't propose every day."

"Somebody is proposing to somebody every day. It goes on all the time. No, sir; I wash my hands of it. I'll not withdraw my consent, and you have my moral support and encouragement, but getting married is the same as getting into trouble-you have to handle your own case."

"But, Mr. Putnam-"

"You'll only go over the same ground again. Good morning. I don't want to hear any more of this until it is settled one way or the other. I'll not help and I'll not hinder. It-It's up to you."

With this colloquial farewell Mr. Putnam waved his hand and turned to his papers. Jimmy accumulated his hat and stick, and left, barren of hope.

That night he took Lucy to see "Romeo and Juliet." The confidence and enthusiasm of Romeo merely threw him into a deeper despair of his own ability as a suitor, and made him even more taciturn and stumbling of speech than ever. His silence grew heavier and heavier, until at last Lucy threw out her never-failing life-line. She asked him about his cousin Mary.

"By the way," he said, brightening up, "Cousin Mary is going through here one day next week."

"Is she? How I should like to know her. If she is anything like you she must be very agreeable."

"She isn't like me, but she is agreeable. Won't you let me try to bring you two together-at lunch down-town, or something like that?"

"It would be fine."

"I'll do it. I'll arrange it just as soon as I see her."

Then silence, pall-like, fell again upon them. Jimmy thought of Romeo, and Lucy thought of-Romeo, let us say. When a young man and a young woman, who are the least bit inclined one to another, witness Shakespeare's great educative effort, the young woman can not help imagining herself leaning over the balcony watching the attempts of the young man to clamber up the rope ladder.

After he had gone that night, Lucy sat down for a soul communion with herself. Pity the woman who does not have soul communions. She who can sit side by side with herself and make herself believe that she is perfectly right and proper in thinking and believing as she does, is happy. The first question Lucy Putnam put to her subliminal self was: "Do I love Jimmy?" Subliminal self, true to sex, equivocated. It said: "I am not sure." Whereupon Lucy asked: "Why do I love him?" Then ensued the debate. Subliminal self said it was because he was a clean, good-hearted, manly fellow. Lucy responded that he was too bashful. "He is handsome," retorted subliminal self. "But there are times when he grows so abashed that he is awkward." Subliminal self said he would outgrow that. "But there are other men who are just as nice, just as handsome, and just as clever, who are not so overwhelmingly shy," argued Lucy. Whereat subliminal self drew itself up proudly and demanded: "Name one!" And Lucy was like the person who can remember faces, but has no memory at all for names.

The two were standing on a corner, waiting for a swirl of foot passengers, carriages and street-cars, to be untangled, when Mary heard Jimmy making some remark about "Miss Putnam."

"So, she's the one, is she, Jimmy?"

"Well-er-I-I don't know. You see-"

"Certainly I see. Who wouldn't? Is she pretty, Jimmy?"

Jimmy saw a pathway through the crowd and led his cousin to the farther curb before answering:

"Yes, she is very pretty."

"Tell me all about her. How long have you known her? How did you meet her? Is she tall or short? Is she dark or fair? Is she musical? Oh, I am just dying to know all about her!"

All the way down State Street Jimmy talked. All the way down State Street he was urged on and aided and abetted by the questions and comments of Cousin Mary, and when they had buffeted their way over Jackson to Michigan Avenue and found breathing room, she turned to him and asked pointedly:

"When is it to be?"

"When is what to be?"

"The wedding."

"Whose wedding?" Jimmy's tone was utterly innocent.

"Whose? Yours and Lucy's, to be sure."

"Mine and Lucy's? Why? Mary, I've never asked her yet."

"You've never asked her! Do you mean to tell me that when you can talk about her for seven or eight blocks, as you have, you have not even asked her to marry you? Why, James Trottingham Minton, you ought to be ashamed of yourself! Where does this paragon of women live? Take me to see her. I want to apologize for you."

"Won't it be better to get her to come in and lunch with us? She lives so far out you'd miss your train east this afternoon."

"The very thing. Would she come?"

"Then, why have you waited so long to tell me. Where are we to meet her?"

"Well, I didn't know for sure what day you would be here, so I didn't make any definite arrangement. I'm to let her know."

"Oh, Jimmy! Jimmy! You need a guardian, and not a guardian angel, either. You need the other sort. You deserve hours of punishment for your thoughtlessness. Now go right away and send her word that I am here and dying to meet her."

"All right. We'll have lunch here at the Annex. You'll excuse me just a moment, and I'll send her a telegram and ask her to come in."

"Yes, but hurry. You should have told her yesterday. When will you ever learn how to be nice to a girl?"

Jimmy, feeling somehow that he had been guilty of a breach of courtesy that should fill him with remorse, hastened to the telegraph desk and scribbled a message to Lucy. It read:

"Please meet me and Mary at Annex at 2 o'clock."

"Rush that," he said to the operator.

The operator glanced over the message and grinned.

"Certainly, sir," he said. "This sort of a message always goes rush. Wish you luck, sir."

The operator has not yet completely gathered the reason for the reproving stare Jimmy gave him. In part it has been explained to him. But, as Jimmy has said since, the man deserved censure for drawing an erroneous conclusion from another's mistake.

It was then noon, so Jimmy and Mary, at Mary's suggestion, got an appetite by making another tour of the shops. In the meantime a snail-paced messenger boy was climbing the Putnam steps with the telegram in his hand.

Lucy took the telegram from the boy and told him to wait until she saw if there should be an answer. She tore off the envelope, unfolded the yellow slip of paper, read the message, gasped, blushed and turned and left the patient boy on the steps.

Into the house she rushed, calling to her mother. She thrust the telegram into her hands, exclaiming:

"Read that! Isn't it what we might have expected?"

"Mercy! What is it? Who's dead?"

"Nobody! It's better than that," was Lucy's astonishing reply.

Mrs. Putnam read the telegram, and then beamingly drew her daughter to her and kissed her. The two then wrote a message, after much counting of words, to be sent to Jimmy. It read:

"Of course. Mama will come with me. Telephone to papa."

When this reached Jimmy he was nonplused. He rubbed his forehead, studied the message, reread it, and then handed it to Mary with the suggestion:

"Maybe you can make it out. I can't."

Mary knitted her brows and studied the message in turn. At length she handed it back.

"It is simple," she decided. "She is a nice, sweet girl, and she wants me to meet her mama and papa. Or maybe she wants us to be chaperoned."

So Jimmy and Mary waited in the hotel parlor until Lucy should arrive. Reminded by Mary, Jimmy went to the 'phone and told Mr. Putnam that Lucy was coming to lunch with him.

"Well, that's all right, isn't it, Jimmy?" Mr. Putnam asked.

"Yes. But she told me to telephone you."

"Why?"

"I don't know. But won't you join us?"

"Is that other matter arranged, Jimmy?"

"N-no. Not yet."

"I told you I didn't want to see you until it was. As soon as you wake up, let me know. Good-by."

Jimmy, red, returned to the parlor, and there was confronted by a vision of white, with shining eyes and pink cheeks, who rushed up to him and kissed him and called him a dear old thing and said he was the cleverest, most unconventional man that ever was.

Limp, astounded, but delighted, James Trottingham Minton drew back a pace from Lucy Putnam, who, in her dainty white dress and her white hat and filmy white veil, was a delectable sight.

"I want you to meet Cousin Mary," he said.

"Is she to attend?"

"Of course," he answered.

"Jimmy, you will be kind to my little girl?"

Jimmy looked from mother to daughter in dumb bewilderment. Certainly this was the most remarkable conduct he ever had dreamed of. Yet, Mrs. Putnam's smile was so affectionate and kind, her eyes met his with such a tender look that he intuitively felt that all was right as right should be. And yet-why should they act as they did?

Into the midst of his reflections burst Lucy's chum, Alice Jordan.

"I've a notion to kiss him, too!" she cried.

Jimmy stonily held himself in readiness to be kissed. If kissing went by favor he was pre-eminently a favored one. But Lucy clutched his arm with a pretty air of ownership and forbade Alice.

"Indeed, you will not. It wouldn't be good form now. After-afterward, you may. Just once. Isn't that right, Jimmy?"

"Perfectly," he replied, his mind still whirling in an effort to adjust actualities to his conception of what realities should be.

The four had formed a little group to themselves in the center of the parlor, Lucy clinging to Jimmy's arm, Mrs. Putnam eying them both with a happy expression, and Alice fluttering from one to the other, assuring them that they were the handsomest couple she ever had seen, that they ought to be proud of each other, and that Mrs. Putnam ought to be proud of them, and that she was sure nobody in all the world ever, ever could be as sublimely, beatifically happy as they would be, and that they must be sure to let her come to visit them.

"And," she cried, admiringly, stopping to pat Jimmy on his unclutched arm, "I just think your idea of proposing by telegraph was the brightest thing I ever heard of!"

It is to be written to the everlasting credit of James Trottingham Minton that he restrained himself from uttering the obvious remark on hearing this. Two words from him would have wrecked the house of cards. Instead, he blushed and smiled modestly. Slowly it was filtering into his brain that by some unusual, unexpected, unprecedented freak of fortune his difficulties had been overcome; that some way or other he had proposed and had been accepted.

"I shall always cherish that telegram," Lucy declared, leaning more affectionately toward Jimmy. "If that grimy-faced messenger boy had not gone away so quickly with my answer I should have kissed him!"

"I've got the telegram here, dear," said Mrs. Putnam.

"Oh, let's see it again," Alice begged. "I always wanted to hear a proposal, but it is some satisfaction to see one."

Mrs. Putnam opened her hand satchel, took out the telegram, unfolded it slowly, and they all looked at it, Jimmy gulping down a great choke of joy as he read:

"Please meet me and marry at Annex at two o'clock."

"Mary," he said boldly, without a tremor in his voice, "I want you to meet the future Mrs. Minton, and my future mother-in-law, Mrs. Putnam, and my future-what are you to me, anyhow, Alice?"

"I'm a combination flower girl, maid of honor and sixteen bridesmaids chanting the wedding march," she laughed.

"And when," Mary gasped, "when is this to be?"

"At two o'clock," Lucy answered.

"Oh, Jimmy! You wretch! You never told me a word about it. But never mind. I bought the very thing for a wedding gift this morning."

Jimmy tore himself away from the excited laughter and chatter, ran to the telephone and got Mr. Putnam on the wire.

"This is Minton," he said.

"Who? Oh! Jimmy? Well?"

"Well, I've fixed that up."

"Good. And when is it to be?"

"Right away. Here at the Annex. I want you to go and get the license for me on your way over."

"Come, come, Jimmy. Don't be in such precipitate haste."

"You told me that was the only way to arrange these matters."

"Humph! Did I? Well, I'll get the license for you-"

"Good-by, then. I've got to telephone for a minister."

The minister was impressed at once with the value of haste in coming, and on his way back to the wedding party Jimmy stopped long enough to hand a five-dollar bill to the telegraph operator.

"Thank you, sir," said the astonished man. "I have been worrying for fear I had made a mistake about your message."

"You did. You made the greatest mistake of your life. Thank you!"