Bill got up smiling from his chair and went over to Marvin, patting him proudly on the shoulder; but a look from the judge and a snarl from Blodgett sent him back again.
Marvin continued. "Now, up to the time you met Mr. Jones you did not know anything about him, did you?"
Hammond shrugged, drawing his mouth into an angry curve. "Of course not, but it didn't take me long to find out about him."
Marvin gave the arm of the witness-chair two angry thumps. "I agree with you there, Mr. Hammond," he said. "Eight hours after you first saw Mr. Jones he was driven from his house and you have never set eyes on him since. Yet you have testified that he is a drunkard, a loafer, a liar, and a lawbreaker!"
Hammond, startled at the swiftness with which Marvin had turned his testimony to profit, shrugged himself into a straight position. "Well, it didn't take me one hour to see what Jones was," he said.
Marvin nodded with half-closed eyes at Hammond and smiled reassuringly at Bill. "You also said he was cruel to his wife?"
Hammond nodded.
"In what way?"
Hammond hesitated, moving uneasily from side to side. "Well," he snarled, "his manner was insulting. He criticized the dress she was wearing before the other guests."
This amused the court-room, which in turn had to be quieted. "And do you think the claim of intolerable cruelty is substantiated by a husband's criticizing his wife's dress?" asked Marvin, smiling.