“Why, for a chap like you that list’s a day’s work by itself! Good boy!”
No reply. Caleb glanced obliquely at the taciturn lad. The sallow, lean face, with its dark-hollowed eyes, was expressionless, dull, apathetic.
“Say!” demanded Conover, “what’s the matter with you, anyhow?”
“Nothing.”
“Ain’t sick, or anything?”
“No.”
“Still grouching over that girl?”
“My wife? Yes.”
“Ain’t got over it yet? I’ve told you you’re well out of it. If she’d cared anything for you she’d never have settled with my New York lawyer for $60,000 and withdrawn that fool alienation suit she was starting against me, or signed that general release. You’re well out of it. I’ll send you up to South Dakota after the campaign’s all over and let you get a divorce on the quiet. No one around here’ll ever know you was married, and in the long run the experience won’t hurt you. You’ve acted pretty decent lately, Jerry, and I’m not half sorry I changed my mind on that ‘heavy-father’ stunt and didn’t kick you out. After all, one marriage more or less is more of an accident than a failing, so long as folks don’t let it get to be a habit. You acted like an idiot. But bygones are bygones, so cut out the sulks. Cheap chorus girls weren’t made for grown men to marry.”
“I’ll thank you to say nothing against her,” intervened Gerald stiffly, with the first faint show of interest his father had observed in him for weeks.