He did not reply, and presently she broke out, angrily, with:
“The huzzy! The ungrateful, deceitful jade! To treat a body so. How do we know whether he’s got anything to keep a wife on? I’ll admit, though, he was alwus genteel-dressed. I do think, Bart, you might ’a’ took pattern ’n that. ’Twa’n’t like as if you wa’n’t able to wear good clo’es—an’ Laviny liked such things.”
“I wish you’d ’a’ told me a good spell ago what she liked, Mrs. Vaiden.”
“Well, that’s so. There ain’t much use ’n lockin’ the stable door after the horse ’s gone. Oh, that makes me think about your offerin’ me that buggy—’s if I w’u’d!”
“I guess you’ll have to. I’m goin’ to leave on the train, an’ I’ll order it sent to you.”
“Oh, you! Why, where you goin’, Bart?”
“I’m goin’ to follow him!” he thundered, bringing his fist down on the table in a way that made every dish leap out of its place. “I ain’t goin’ to hurt him—unless talk hurts—but I’m goin’ to say some things to him. I ain’t had a thought for three year that that girl ain’t b’en in! I ain’t made a plan that she ain’t b’en in. I’ve laid awake night after night just too happy to sleep. An’ now to have a—a thing like him take her from me in one month. But that ain’t the worst!” he burst out, passionately. “We don’t know how he’ll treat her, an’ she’ll be too proud to complain—”
“I can’t see why you care how he treats her,” said Mrs. Vaiden, “after the way she’s treated you.”
“No,” he answered, with a look that ought to have crushed her, “I didn’t s’pose you c’u’d see. I didn’t expect you to see that, or anything else but your own feelin’s—the way the thing affex you. But that’s what I’m goin’ to follow him for, Mrs. Vaiden. An’ when I find him—I’m goin’ to tell him”—there was an awful calm in his tone now—“that if he ever misuses her, now that he’s married her, I’ll kill him. I’ll shoot him down like a dawg!”
“My Lord!” broke in Mrs. Vaiden, with a new thought. “What if he ain’t married her! She never said so ’n her letter. Oh, Bart!” beginning to weep hysterically. “Mebbe you c’u’d get her back.”