Ollie slung a dish carelessly upon the table, and followed 60 it with Joe’s coffee, which she slopped half out into the saucer.
“Oh, I feel just like I don’t care any more!” said she, her lips trembling, tears starting again in her irritated eyes. “I get treatment here that no decent man would give a dog!”
Joe felt small and young in Ollie’s presence, due to the fact that she was older by a year at least than himself.
That feeling of littleness had been one of his peculiarities as long as he could remember when there were others about older than himself, and supposed from that reason to be graver and wiser. It probably had its beginning in Joe’s starting out rather spindling and undersized, and not growing much until he was ten or thereabout, when he took a sudden shoot ahead, like a water-sprout on an apple-tree.
And then he always had regarded matrimony as a state of gravity and maturity, into which the young and unsophisticated did not venture. This feeling seemed to place between them in Joe’s mind a boundless gulf, across which he could offer her only the sympathy and assistance of a boy. There was nothing in his mind of sympathy from an equality of years and understanding, only the chivalric urging of succor to the oppressed.
“It’s a low-down way for a man to treat a woman, especially his wife,” said Joe, his indignation mounting at sight of her tears.
“Yes, and he’d whip you, too, if he dared to do it,” said she, sitting in Isom’s place at the end of the table, where she could look across into Joe’s face. “I can see that in him when he watches you eat.”
“I hope he’ll never try it,” said Joe.
“You’re not afraid of him?”
“Maybe not,” admitted Joe.