“What's he been doing now?” her husband inquired, satirically. “Where'd you get something new against him since the last time you——”
“Just this!” she cried. “The other night when that man was here, if I'd known how he was going to make my child suffer, I'd never have let him set his foot in my house.”
Adams leaned back in his chair as though her absurdity had eased his mind. “Oh, I see,” he said. “You've just gone plain crazy. That's the only explanation of such talk, and it suits the case.”
“Hasn't that man made us all suffer every day of our lives?” she demanded. “I'd like to know why it is that my life and my children's lives have to be sacrificed to him?”
“How are they 'sacrificed' to him?”
“Because you keep on working for him! Because you keep on letting him hand out whatever miserable little pittance he chooses to give you; that's why! It's as if he were some horrible old Juggernaut and I had to see my children's own father throwing them under the wheels to keep him satisfied.”
“I won't hear any more such stuff!” Lifting his paper, Adams affected to read.
“You'd better listen to me,” she admonished him. “You might be sorry you didn't, in case he ever tried to set foot in my house again! I might tell him to his face what I think of him.”
At this, Adams slapped the newspaper down upon his knee. “Oh, the devil! What's it matter what you think of him?”
“It had better matter to you!” she cried. “Do you suppose I'm going to submit forever to him and his family and what they're doing to my child?”