“August 10.—Dressed up and visited school.”
The lawyer ran his eye over the other entries, noting a general similarity in all. Then he read aloud:
“August 10.—Suspect he is making a valentine.
“August 12.—Caught him at it and took the valentine.”
“And this is it, eh?” he inquired, tapping the gaudily decorated sheet on the table. “But this is hardly the season for valentines.”
“And this ain’t the season for a man that’s goin’ on fifty-two to fall in love with an eighteen-year-old girl, either,” she retorted. “But he’s done it. And ’sides all I’ve put down, it has been a continual peddlin’ out to her of candy and apples and fol-de-rols. You understand that by twistin’ a little I can see that schoolhouse door right from my but’ry winder, and there it is in that paper, chalked up to date.”
For the first time since she had entered the room his eyes softened a bit. He shook the paper at her gently.
“I understand, do I,” he inquired, his mild tones contrasting soothingly with her high-pitched anger, “that this record of devotion to a certain school-house door means that ’Caje is——”
“It means,” she shrilled, “that that miserable, old, soft-headed fool of a husband of mine has gone to work and fell in love with that young teeter-bird of a schoolmarm in our deestrick, and has acted out till I’m distracted. I can’t do nothin’ with him, Squire. He jest grunts and growls and clears out of the house when I go at him. Now it’s come to the end of the jig. Understand? It’s the wind-up.
“There’s the dockyments. I want to warn you right at the outset that you ain’t goin’ to come none of your gum-games on me, the way they tell of you actin’ with some of them that come to you for law. My mind is as set as old Pisgy itself.” She brought her work-stained hand down on the chair rail with a vehemence that made it creak.