“It's perfectly safe,” Billy concluded to Saxon. “I've known him since we was kids at the Durant School together. He's straight as a die.”
“That's got nothing to do with it,” Saxon chided. “If you were single you'd have lent it to him immediately, wouldn't you?”
Billy nodded.
“Then it's no different because you're married. It's your money, Billy.”
“Not by a damn sight,” he cried. “It ain't mine. It's ourn. And I wouldn't think of lettin' anybody have it without seein' you first.”
“I hope you didn't tell him that,” she said with quick concern.
“Nope,” Billy laughed. “I knew, if I did, you'd be madder'n a hatter. I just told him I'd try an' figure it out. After all, I was sure you'd stand for it if you had it.”
“Oh, Billy,” she murmured, her voice rich and low with love; “maybe you don't know it, but that's one of the sweetest things you've said since we got married.”
The more Saxon saw of Mercedes Higgins the less did she understand her. That the old woman was a close-fisted miser, Saxon soon learned. And this trait she found hard to reconcile with her tales of squandering. On the other hand, Saxon was bewildered by Mercedes' extravagance in personal matters. Her underlinen, hand-made of course, was very costly. The table she set for Barry was good, but the table for herself was vastly better. Yet both tables were set on the same table. While Barry contented himself with solid round steak, Mercedes ate tenderloin. A huge, tough muttonchop on Barry's plate would be balanced by tiny French chops on Mercedes' plate. Tea was brewed in separate pots. So was coffee. While Barry gulped twenty-five cent tea from a large and heavy mug, Mercedes sipped three-dollar tea from a tiny cup of Belleek, rose-tinted, fragile as all egg-shell. In the same manner, his twenty-five cent coffee was diluted with milk, her eighty cent Turkish with cream.
“'Tis good enough for the old man,” she told Saxon. “He knows no better, and it would be a wicked sin to waste it on him.”