Judging from the effect which the letter had upon Bud, it must have
been a masterpiece of its kind. He threw the box of chocolates into the
wood-box, crawled out of the window by which he had entered, and went
down town to a hotel. If the house wasn't good enough for Marie, let her
go. He could go just as fast and as far as she could. And if she thought
he was going to hot-foot it over to her mother's and whine around and
beg her to come home, she had another think coming.
He wouldn't go near the darn place again, except to get his clothes.
He'd bust up the joint, by thunder. He'd sell off the furniture and turn
the house over to the agent again, and Marie could whistle for a home.
She had been darn glad to get into that house, he remembered, and away
from that old cat of a mother. Let her stay there now till she was darn
good and sick of it. He'd just keep her guessing for awhile; a week or
so would do her good. Well, he wouldn't sell the furniture--he'd just
move it into another house, and give her a darn good scare. He'd get a
better one, that had a porcelain bathtub instead of a zinc one, and a
better porch, where the kid could be out in the sun. Yes, sir, he'd just
do that little thing, and lay low and see what Marie did about that.
Keep her guessing--that was the play to make.
Unfortunately for his domestic happiness, Bud failed to take into
account two very important factors in the quarrel. The first and most
important one was Marie's mother, who, having been a widow for fifteen
years and therefore having acquired a habit of managing affairs that
even remotely concerned her, assumed that Marie's affairs must be
managed also. The other factor was Marie's craving to be coaxed back to
smiles by the man who drove her to tears. Marie wanted Bud to come and
say he was sorry, and had been a brute and so forth. She wanted to hear
him tell how empty the house had seemed when he returned and found her
gone. She wanted him to be good and scared with that letter. She stayed
awake until after midnight, listening for his anxious footsteps; after
midnight she stayed awake to cry over the inhuman way he was treating
her, and to wish she was dead, and so forth; also because the baby
woke and wanted his bottle, and she was teaching him to sleep all night
without it, and because the baby had a temper just like his father.