Her Husband's Purse

by Helen Reimensnyder Martin

She suddenly raised her eyes again and laughed sarcastically. "Oh, you can't scare me with your threats! You'll not go!"

"You'll see whether we won't! You just dare to take those sick children outside this house, and you won't find I and Sadie here when you come home!"

"That won't worry me. You'll be back soon enough. Catch you leaving your brother's house! Oh, no, my dear, you don't fool me for one minute. Why, where on earth would you go?"

"Maybe you don't know," put in Sadie triumphantly, "that Jennie and me own the nice empty house at the corner that the tenants moved out of because we wouldn't repaper!"

"Yes," exclaimed Jennie, "we own it and it's empty; and it's all been cleaned only last week a'ready. So then you see if we couldn't move out of here perfectly convenient!"

Margaret's hopes rose higher, while at the same time she suffered fearful misgivings lest by any inadvertency on her part they be dashed.

"Ha!" she laughed derisively and most artificially. "You'd never move in there and lose the rent of that house! You can't fool me! I'm not scared. Come, baby dear, other little arm now!" she said, tugging at Daniel Junior's coat. "Fancy your moving out! Ha!"

Her utterly unnatural tone of taunting sarcasm ought not to have deceived even so slow a mind as Jennie Leitzel's, but the woman's rage dulled what penetration she ordinarily had and she was completely misled.

"I'm not trying to fool you!" she almost screamed. "I tell you that sure as you go out the door with those two twins, my brother, when he comes home this evening, will find us and our furniture gone, never to come back! I'll prove it to you, I'll prove it! And we'll take Emmy along, and there'll be no dinner for my poor brother when he comes home!"

"Oh, yes, there will," Margaret laughed quite sardonically. "There will be dinner and there will be two dear, devoted sisters. If you do take your departure, you'll be back soon enough!" Her unnatural tones kept it up, every phrase carefully calculated to force the consummation she so devoutly wished, though inwardly her very soul was sick at the part she played; for deep down in her heart there was an undercurrent of pity for these poor creatures so limited in their capacity for happiness and yet capable of fiercely loving the babies so dear to them all and the brother they had cherished from babyhood.