“Just the same, you didn’t come till I went after you.”
“Howdy, Mrs. Luce,” said the Judge quietly. “Howdy, Jim. Set down.”
“What I hate,” explained the woman, addressing the Judge, “is coming up Main Street with a man I’ve divorced.” She spoke so forcibly that her pendent earrings—large, pinkish pearls of glass—swung backward and forward against her thin, wrinkled neck. “The whole town’ll be talking. And I’m suffering enough as it is. My sister, she said to me when I got engaged, ‘You marry him, and you’re hunting trouble,’ but I——”
The Judge held up a hand to enjoin silence. “Jim,” he said, “I’ll hear your side of this fuss first. Mrs. Luce, accordin’ to the laws of all civylised countries, you, bein’ as you’re a woman, you git the last word.” He gave her a kindly smile.
Luce was short and thick-set, with a face as round and red as the full moon seen through a dust-cloud. He shrugged his heavy shoulders in disgust. “And my sister says to me when I married, ‘Jim, you can be anything you want to be if you just git the right kind of a wife.’ Now see what I am, Judge,—nothin’.”
“Some behind in your alimony, ain’t you, Jim?” inquired the Judge.
“Three months. But I’ll have the cash as soon as I ship my pear crop. She says she can’t wait. What’s the matter with her?”
“My self-playing piano’s the matter with me,” retorted Mrs. Luce. “I only paid forty down on it last spring. There’s one hundred and fifteen due in ten days from now—or lose the piano. Jim can get me the money if he wants to, Judge. He’s just sold his peaches.”
“I ain’t been paid for ’em,” declared Luce.
“That’s another,” said Mrs. Luce. “He got his peach money all right, and spent it.”