“The trouble is,” he announced, dogmatically, “the trouble is, Roscoe, that you ain't fitted for bein' shut up astern of a deck. Look at yourself now! Just go into Comfort's room and stand in front of her lookin' glass and look at yourself. There you be, pale and peaked and wore out. Look for all the world just as I done when I had the tonsils two winters ago. Ain't that so, Dorindy?”
His wife's answer was a contemptuous sniff.
“If you mean to say that you looked peaked when you had sore throat,” she announced, “then there's somethin' the matter with your mind or your eyesight, one or t'other. You peaked? Why, your face was swelled up like a young one's balloon Fourth of July Day. And as for bein' pale! My soul! I give you my word I couldn't scurcely tell where your neck left off and the strip of red flannel you made me tie 'round it begun.”
“Don't make no difference! I FELT pale, anyhow. And I didn't eat no more'n Ros does. You'll have to give in to that, Dorindy. I didn't eat nothin' but beef tea and gruel.”
“You et enough of them to float a schooner.”
“Maybe I did,” with grieved dignity; “maybe I did. But that's no reason why you should set there and heave my sufferin's in my face.”
“What is the man talkin' about now? I didn't heave 'em in your face. They come there themselves, same as sore throat sufferin's generally do, and if you hadn't waded around in the snow with leaky boots, because you was too lazy to take 'em to the shoemaker's to be patched, they wouldn't.”
Lute drew back from the table. “It's no use!” he declared, “a man can't even be sick in peace in this house. Some wives would have been sorry to see their husbands with one foot in the grave.”
“Your feet was in the cookstove oven most of the time. There! there! the more you talk the further from home you get. You started in with Roscoe and the bank and you're in the grave already. If I was you I'd quit afore I went any further. Land knows where you might fetch up if you kept on! I . . . Mercy on us! who's at the kitchen door this time in the mornin'?”
Her husband, ever curious, was on his way to answer the knock already. He came back, a moment later, sputtering with excitement.