"Lucille wouldn't——" began Francis, and stopped.
"And why wouldn't she? Didn't she tell me that I was a poor little pet, and that men could always take care of themselves and, then turn around and help you carry me away? And it was carrying me away—it was stealing me, as if I were one of those poor Sabine women in the history book."
They were fronting each other across the threshold all this time, Francis with his face rigid and pale with anger, his wife flushed and quivering.
"I admit I hadn't thought of that," said Francis, referring presumably to Lucille's possibilities as an informer, and not to Marjorie's being a Sabine woman.
Marjorie moved back wearily and sat on the bed.
"And you were just getting to be such a nice friend," she mourned. "I was getting so I liked you. There never was anybody pleasanter than you while we were coming up from New York. Why, you weren't like a person one was married to, at all!"
"More like a friend nor a 'usband," quoted Francis unexpectedly.
Marjorie looked at him in surprise. Any one who could stop in the middle of a very fine quarrel to see the funny side of things that way wasn't so bad, her mind remarked to itself before she could stop it.
"What do you mean?" she asked, mitigating her wrath a little.
"Why, you know the story; the cockney woman who had a black eye, and when the settlement worker asked her if her husband had given it to her said, 'Bless you, no, miss—'e's more like a friend nor a 'usband!'"