She did not reply, but another voice did. "I am her husband, sir," and another head, with a jolly face and a big moustache, appeared beside the landlady's.
We dumped our operatic load across the street and I hid my shamed head in the pillows, making a sacred vow that for ever more I shall keep very busy attending to my own affairs. This led to a very pleasant Sunday for me—and the sheriff—however. The landlady's husband could take a joke—especially when it was on me, and at breakfast we became very good friends. He invited me to his club and we—and the legal limb—spent the afternoon there. His face grew bigger and jollier each hour, and finally he became very confidential. Referring to his own peccadilloes, he made the statement that he had the best-natured wife in the world. I had no reason to controvert this, but he seemed to think that I doubted it, and went on to accumulate testimony.
"We've never had a quarrel yet, though we've been married sixteen years," he declared. "I'll bet that no matter what I might do when I go home, she'd smile through it all."
This didn't interest me, but my legal guardian seemed curious. He even went so far as to doubt our friend. It wasn't long before they had patched up some sort of a wager between them. The husband was to go home to supper, appear intoxicated, raise a row, break dishes and otherwise generally make an ass of himself. If his wife kept her temper it was on the sheriff, and vice versa.
Bill—his name was William Jenks—started off ahead. We were to follow at a distance and observe results from the yard. Bill began to totter and sway as he neared the house, and presently Mrs. J. ran out of the front gate to meet him. She picked up his hat from the ground, brushed it and put it on, and then kissed him. Then she guided his uncertain legs into the house. When we reached the window which looked into the parlor we saw Bill sitting on the floor, howling incoherencies at his wife, who was trying to help him pull off his shoes. When they were off he commanded: "Put 'em on the mantelpiece," and she did it. Then he got up and staggered across the room and fell, just before he reached a sofa.
"What did yer pull sofa 'way for?" he howled.
"Oh, William, forgive me. I didn't know. I'm so awkward. Did you hurt yourself?" And she tried to help him up. But he wouldn't get up, and continued to abuse her like a pickpocket. Finally she induced him to go into the dining-room and sit down at the supper table. As a prelude he shied a teacup past her head and against the wall. Then he pulled away the tablecloth and with it the dishes, and sat down on the floor amid the ruins.
What did that wonder of a woman do but plump down on the floor in front of him and say, with a smile as of gratified pleasure, "Why, William, isn't this nice? We haven't eaten on the floor since we were married. So like the old picnic days!" Then she tried to rearrange the broken crockery and rescue the supper. It was too much for me, and I guess Bill thought he had gone far enough, for he began to smile and abandoned his assumed inebriety.
"Mary, my dear," he said, "I brought home a couple of friends to supper. They're outside and—"
"Brought home friends to supper," cried his wife, jumping to her feet, "brought them home to supper, did you, without notice to me, when you knew it was Sally's afternoon out? I'll teach you," and she set both hands in his hair and shook him. "I've stood your freaks for sixteen years and been patient and loving, but this is more than human nature is capable of. Friends? No warning? What would they think of me?"