Georgia's voice, which had been thin and colorless, grew suddenly thick with the bitter memories of seven years. "It is oftentimes," she said. "Bad bargain and cheap sale."
"And now and then it's a damned high buy, too, when a man gives up his liberty for a daily panning from his wife, and his mother-in-law, and kid brother."
"If I am a kid," the boy interrupted passionately, "I've brought in more and taken out less than you the last year."
Blood called to blood, and the clan of Talbot closed around the lone Connor.
"When he had to come out of school and go to work because you couldn't keep a job!" screamed the elder lady.
"You big stiff," Al brought up the reënforcement half-crying with rage.
"You shut up or I'll—" Jim answered hoarsely, drawing back his fist in menace.
Al jumped for a light chair and swung it just off the ground, meeting the challenge. So standing, the two glowered at each other—Jim wishing that he was twenty years younger, Al that he was three years older.
As Georgia stood back from them hoping that she would not have to interpose physically between the two, as had happened once or twice in the past year, she felt more intensely than she ever had before that her home life was very sordid and degrading to her. This eternal jangling which seemed to run on just the same whether she took part in it or not, was the life for snarling hyenas, not for a young woman with an ambition for "getting on," for rising in the social scale.
The two males, finally impelled by a common doubt of the outcome, tacitly agreed upon verbal rather than physical violence. The raucous quarrel broke out anew. Mrs. Talbot—but you, gentle reader, undoubtedly can surmise substantially what followed. You must have friends who have family quarrels.