‘Why don’t you talk, Joe?’ asked Mary. ‘You scarcely ever speak to me now: it’s like drawing blood out of a stone to get a word from you. What makes you so cross, Joe?’
‘Well, I’ve got nothing to say.’
‘But you should find something. Think of me—it’s very miserable for me. Have you anything on your mind? Is there any new trouble? Better tell me, no matter what it is, and not go worrying and brooding and making both our lives miserable. If you never tell one anything, how can you expect me to understand?’
I said there was nothing the matter.
‘But there must be, to make you so unbearable. Have you been drinking, Joe—or gambling?’
I asked her what she’d accuse me of next.
‘And another thing I want to speak to you about,’ she went on. ‘Now, don’t knit up your forehead like that, Joe, and get impatient——’
‘Well, what is it?’
‘I wish you wouldn’t swear in the hearing of the children. Now, little Jim to-day, he was trying to fix his little go-cart and it wouldn’t run right, and—and——’
‘Well, what did he say?’