"HOW did you hurt him?" she persisted.
"I ate lunch," said Zoie with the face of a cherub.
"With whom?" questioned Aggie slyly. She was beginning to scent the
probable origin of the misunderstanding.
"It's of no consequence," answered Zoie carelessly; "I wouldn't have
wiped my feet on the man." By this time she had entirely forgotten
Aggie's proprietorship in the source of her trouble.
"But who WAS the man?" urged Aggie, and in her mind, she had already
condemned him as a low, unprincipled creature.
"What does that matter?" asked Zoie impatiently. "It's ANY man with
Alfred--you know that--ANY man!"
Aggie sank in a chair and looked at her friend in despair. "Why DO you
do these things," she said wearily, "when you know how Alfred feels
about them?"
"You talk as though I did nothing else," answered Zoie with an aggrieved
tone. "It's the first time since I've been married that I've ever eaten
lunch with any man but Alfred. I thought you'd have a little sympathy
with me," she whimpered, "instead of putting me on the gridiron like
everyone else does."
"Everyone else?" questioned Aggie, with recurring suspicion.
"I mean Alfred," explained Zoie. "HE'S 'everyone else' to me." And then
with a sudden abandonment of grief, she threw herself prostrate at her
friend's knees. "Oh, Aggie, what can I do?" she cried.
But Aggie was not satisfied with Zoie's fragmentary account of her
latest escapade. "Is that the only thing that Alfred has against you?"
she asked.
"That's the LATEST," sniffled Zoie, in a heap at Aggie's feet. And then
she continued in a much aggrieved tone, "You know he's ALWAYS rowing
because we haven't as many babies as the cook has cats."
"Well, why don't you get him a baby?" asked the practical, far-seeing
Aggie.
"It's too late NOW," moaned Zoie.
"Not at all," reassured Aggie. "It's the very thing that would bring him
back."
"How COULD I get one?" questioned Zoie, and she looked up at Aggie with
round astonished eyes.
"Adopt it," answered Aggie decisively.
Zoie regarded her friend with mingled disgust and disappointment. "No,"
she said with a sigh and a shake of her head, "that wouldn't do any
good. Alfred's so fussy. He always wants his OWN things around."
"He needn't know," declared Aggie boldly.