Summary
Hokum Alley, a microcosm stitched from sweat, serge, and static electricity, houses two rival haberdashers whose tape measures never quite reach the heart. Charlie, a nimble-fingered cynic with a thimble for a soul, shares cramped air with Peggy, a seamstress who unpicks morality as deftly as basting thread. Between them prowls Brownie, a terrier whose jaws turn torn worsted into bread-and-butter; every rent trouser-leg is a windfall, every startled pedestrian a walking invoice. Enter Bud, a wallet-flashing palooka whose gallantry is measured in overdue rent slips and whose gullibility is bottomless—Peggy reels him in like a trout with a hemline, filleting his bankroll with eyelash-fluttering precision. Marriage ensues: a hasty overlock stitch that frays the instant a foundling appears, ferried in by Brownie like a squealing bundle of fate. Bud, discovering the knot already tied, cries cuckoldry and brandishes the infant as evidence; Peggy, high on adrenaline and low on trust, elopes with the accuser. Yet the farce corrects itself: the babe’s true progenitor materializes, pressing a reward into Charlie’s calloused palm while absolving him of paternal suspicion. A chase—through alleyways echoing with clattering scissors and the hiss of steam-irons—ends in a public showdown where Charlie flings Bud’s calumny back like a returned garment. The lie unravels; Peggy, mortified by her own haste, slips back into matrimony with the only man who never sold her a fiction.
Synopsis
Charlie is a tailor, of Hokum Alley. So is Peggy. Both are so busy that they find plenty of time to hang around each others stores. Charlie has a dog named Brownie. Brownie tears the pants of unsuspecting passers-by, thus getting work for Charlie. Bud comes into Peggy's shop and helps Peggy pay the landlord. Peggy also vamps him to the extent of collecting quite a bit of cash from him and then she and Charlie get married. One day Brownie brings a baby into the shop. Bud comes in and finds out that Peggy is married to Charlie. He accuses Charlie of being the baby's daddy and when Peggy learns of this supposed infidelity of Charlie's she runs off with Bud, the villain. In the meantime the real father of the child appears on the scene and hands Charlie a reward for saving his young one. Charlie pursues the villain and his wife, and confronting Bud, says that Bud is the father of the child and that Bud's wife had just come into his store and paid him a reward for saving her child. Peggy gets furious at Bud and returns to Charlie, whom she now feels is the only one truthful to her.
