"Of course," she said, sharply; "Olly, Olly again and always. I ought to have remembered that."
"Thet's so," said Gabriel with the same exasperating quiet. "I was reckonin' jest now, ez there don't seem to be any likeliness of you and Olly's gettin' on together, you'd better separate. Thar ain't no sense goin' on this way, July—no sense et all. And the worst o' the hull thing ez thet Olly ain't gettin' no kinder good outer it, no way!"
Mrs. Conroy was very pale and dangerously quiet as Mr. Conroy went on.
"I've allers allowed to send that child to school, but she don't keer to go. She's thet foolish, thet Olly is, thet she doesn't like to leave me, and I reckon I'm thet foolish too thet I don't like to hev her go. The only way to put things square ez this"——
Mrs. Conroy turned and fixed her grey eyes upon her husband, but she did not speak.
"You'd better go away," continued Gabriel, quietly, "for a while. I've heerd afore now that it's the reg'lar thing fur a bride to go away and visit her mother. You hain't got no mother," said Gabriel thoughtfully, "hev ye?—that's bad. But you was a sayin' the other day suthin' about some business you had down at 'Frisco. Now it would be about the nateral sort o' thing for ye to go thar fur two or three months, jest till things get round square with Olly and me."
It is probable that Gabriel was the only man from whom Mrs. Conroy could have received this humiliating proposition without interrupting him with a burst of indignation. Yet she only turned a rigid face towards the fire again with a hysterical laugh.
"Why limit my stay to two or three months?" she said.
"Well, it might be four," said Gabriel, simply—"it would give me and Olly a longer time to get things in shape."
Mrs. Conroy rose and walked rigidly to her husband's side.