He started to leave the room, tripping over a loose seam in the slatternly carpet.
“Don’t bang the door,” Mr. Higginbotham cautioned him.
He felt the blood crawl in his veins, but controlled himself and closed the door softly behind him.
Mr. Higginbotham looked at his wife exultantly.
“He’s ben drinkin’,” he proclaimed in a hoarse whisper. “I told you he would.”
She nodded her head resignedly.
“His eyes was pretty shiny,” she confessed; “and he didn’t have no collar, though he went away with one. But mebbe he didn’t have more’n a couple of glasses.”
“He couldn’t stand up straight,” asserted her husband. “I watched him. He couldn’t walk across the floor without stumblin’. You heard ’m yourself almost fall down in the hall.”
“I think it was over Alice’s cart,” she said. “He couldn’t see it in the dark.”
Mr. Higginbotham’s voice and wrath began to rise. All day he effaced himself in the store, reserving for the evening, with his family, the privilege of being himself.