“Well, I hope she won’t see you. I know what you’ll do—make all sorts of promises, till you get her back there again, and then she can go right on cooking!”
“Do I see her, or don’t I?” asked Brecky, still quite calm.
“I’ll see,” said the peppery young woman, and went off and left him alone.
He had a new idea to contend against, and one for which there was in his experience no precedent. He could comprehend an elopement, but any subtler reason for his wife’s leaving him was extremely hard for him to grasp. It was his habit, though, to face facts, and he tried now.
He tried to imagine Kathleen as a human being, and not as his wife; but he failed. What more could the girl want? He was filled with rage at her ingratitude, and at the humiliating position she had got him into. He was certainly being made a[Pg 50] fool of, for the first time. He had done his best, had worked for her, had been sober, kind, loyal. What more could the girl want?
Whatever it was, she wouldn’t get it—that she wouldn’t! She had left him, and she could come back, if she wished; but he wasn’t going to ask her.
“That’s not my way!” he said to himself, with a grimace. “I won’t crawl for any one. I haven’t done anything. It’s all her fault!”
He was half inclined to walk out of the house then and there, but if by any chance Kathleen was going to be sorry, he didn’t want to miss it. He discovered that he was extremely anxious for her to be sorry, and that if she were, he might perhaps not be so very angry. She needn’t even say it. One nice smile, and the thing would be over.
“I don’t know,” he thought. “Maybe it has been hard for her. She’s only a kid. Of course, it doesn’t excuse her running away like that, and making such a fool of me, but—well, I don’t know. Maybe, later on, I’ll get a servant for her. I could afford it.”