He leaped to his feet panting like an animal; his great breast swelled in and out swiftly, his hands clenched, his eyes burned at her.
“What!” he said. “Do you dare? Her mother! Oh, you—you—God! but I wish you was a man!”
The whistle of a coming train broke across the morning stillness. He turned, seized his hat and crushed it on his head. Then he came back and took up the chair in which he had been sitting.
“Mrs. Vaiden,” he said, quietly, “d’ you see this chair? Well, if he ain’t married her—”
With two or three movements of his powerful wrists he wrenched the chair into as many pieces and dropped them on the floor.
After a while Mrs. Vaiden emerged from the stupefaction into which his last words had thrown her, and resumed her breakfast.
“Well,” she said, stirring her coffee until it swam round and round in a smooth eddy in the cup, “if I ever see his beat! Whoever’d ’a’ thought he’d take his cuttin’-out that a-way? I never ’d ’a’ thought it. Worryin’ about her, after the way she’s up and used him! A body ’d think he’d be glad if she was treated shameful, and hatto lead a mis’rable life a-realizin’ what she’d threw away. But not him. Well, they say still water runs deep. Mebbe it’s ungrateful to think it after his givin’ me that fine buggy—(How Mis’ Bentley will stare when I drive roun’ to see her!” she interjected with a smile of anticipation.) “But after seein’ how he showed up his temper just now I ain’t sure but Laviny’s head was level when she took the other ’n. ’F only he had a donation claim!”
ZARELDA
ZARELDA
“’Reldy! Say, ’Reldy Za-rel-dy!”