"No, I ain't." Bill answered her outburst mildly, backing away from her lest she should discover the flask in his back pocket.
He was too late. Her eye, accustomed to just such investigations, had detected the lines of the flask as it protruded from his back pocket. Taking hold of him, she put her hand in his pocket and produced the flask, holding it, half empty, to the light.
"That belongs to Mr. Harper," was Bill's ready excuse, given in the monotone which invariably masked a world of guilt. Seeing the doubt in his wife's eye, he added, "You can go up-stairs and ask him, if you don't believe it."
Mrs. Jones did not reply to his last remark. Instead of which she went back to the California desk, where she set down the flask, taking up the deed and holding it out to him. "Now, Bill," she said, in a coaxing voice, "I want you to put your name to this paper." She smiled kindly upon him for the first time in many hours.
Bill wavered before her smile. It was difficult for him to withstand it, especially as he knew how sorely he had tried her. But a promise was a promise with Bill, and his one pride was that he had kept intact through all the years of his digressions this one principle—he never broke his word. He had told Marvin he would not sign the deed without consulting him further, so he turned his eyes from his wife's face and answered, in a low voice, "I can't, mother."
"What's the reason you can't?" Mrs. Jones planted herself in front of him, determined that he should not evade her this time.
"Because I promised my lawyer I wouldn't," he answered, his head turned away from her.
Mrs. Jones took him by the arm and swung him into line with her gaze. "Now see here, Bill," she snapped, "I've been working my fingers to the bone and I'm entitled to a rest and you sha'n't stop my having it. Mr. Thomas is going to take Millie and me to the city to live. If you sign that you can come with us. If you don't you've got to look out for yourself for a while."
Bill had not paid much heed to Hammond's threat delivered a few minutes back. But now something in his wife's tone brought it, recurrent, to his mind. He wondered if, after all, there was some truth behind it.
Pausing to gather his points together, Bill nodded toward the stairs. "Mother, that fellow, Hammond, said he'd throw me out. Do you want me to get out? Is that what you mean?"