"What?"
"Good luck in getting away, I mean."
So Dick pursued his course alone, and feeling a good deal more uncomfortable, now that he had a suspicion of Mrs. Dexter's business.
Up at the pretty little Dexter cottage things had been moving serenely of late. Ab. Dexter had not been heard from, and his wife imagined that the fellow had gone to other parts. For weeks she had kept a special policeman in the house at night. On this particular evening the man wanted to be away at a lodge meeting, and Mrs. Dexter had felt that it was wholly safe to let him go, more especially, as resourceful Dick Prescott would put in part of the evening there.
When the bell rang, Jane being upstairs with little Myra, Mrs. Dexter herself opened the front door.
Then she sprang back suddenly, stifling a dismayed little scream, for Abner Dexter stood facing her.
"Didn't expect me, did you?" jeered the fellow, pushing his way into the hall. "Jennie, I'm at the end of my rope, and of my patience, too. I'm broke—have hardly a dollar in the world, and now you've got to do your duty and provide for me in the way that a rich wife should. In there with you!"
Ab. pushed her into a little room just beyond the parlor, and stepped in after her.
"Nice, comfortable place you have here, while I'm wondering where my next meal is coming from!" sneered the fellow.
"Abner, I gave you ten thousand dollars, and you promised to leave me alone," protested the woman, afraid of the evil look that she now saw in her worthless husband's face.