“If you don’t black ‘em better—if you don’t put a brighter shine on to 'em, I’ll—I’ll—I’ll put a shine on your face, you slut!”
The girl seemed to be all terrified eye as she looked at him, and then fled again, while he laughed.
“Ho! ho! ho! I’ll teach ‘em how—insolent curs! G—— d—— Paddies! What business have they coming over here? Ho! ho! ho!”
Leaving his slippers upon the parlor floor, Mr. Dinks mounted to his room and changed his coat. He tried the door of his wife’s room as he passed out, and found it locked. He kicked it violently, and bawled,
“Good-morning, Mrs. Dinks! If Miss Wayne calls, tell her I’ve gone to tell Mr. Abel Newt that she repents, and wants to marry him; and I shall add that, having been through the wood, she picks up a crooked stick at last. Ho! ho! ho! (Kick.) Good-morning, Mrs. Dinks!”
He went heavily down stairs and slammed the front door, and was gone for the day.
When they were first married, after the bitter conviction that there was really no hope of old Burt’s wealth, Fanny Dinks had carried matters with a high hand, domineering by her superior cleverness, and with a superiority that stung and exasperated her husband at every turn. Her bitter temper had gradually entirely eaten away the superficial, stupid good-humor of his younger days; and her fury of disappointment, carried into the detail of life, had gradually confirmed him in all his worst habits and obliterated the possibility of better. But the sour, superior nature was, as usual, unequal to the struggle. At last it spent itself in vain against the massive brutishness of opposition it had itself developed, and the reaction came, and now daily stunned her into hopeless apathy and abject indifference. Having lost the power of vexing, and beyond being really vexed by a being she so utterly despised as her husband, there was nothing left but pure passivity and inanition, into which she was rapidly declining.
Mr. Dinks kicked loudly and roared at the door, but Mrs. Dinks did not heed him. She was sitting in her dingy wrapper, rocking, and pondering upon the conversation of the morning—mechanically rocking, and thinking of the Christinas dinner at Uncle Lawrence’s.