“For ten, twelve years you know us now, Mr. Petersen,” he went on. “All the same, this is a queer business and my old woman she doesn’t like it. She thinks maybe very soon you begin to suspect her.”
“But I tell you I’d never suspect her,” Mr. Petersen insisted.
“The Missis could.”
“Nonsense!” he said again, but he made no impression upon the stolid Swede—nor upon himself.
“Anyway, Mr. Petersen, I want to pay you any time you are thinking my wife is taking something. Any time you would think she got a chicken or what, you just tell me, Mr. Petersen, and I pay you.”
“But I tell you I’d never think so.”
“Maybe sometime you could, Mr. Petersen.”
Mr. Petersen understood what he meant.
“Here you are with a new wife, and what she thinks you’re going to think before long,” was what Hansen’s tone implied, and he resented the implication. They talked a long time about it; neither gave an inch. Hansen’s parting words were:
“Remember, I pay you any time, Mr. Petersen!”