“Insisted on her taking it! Why, man alive, she has it all, that’s the trouble; I hand all the funds over to that rascal, else we’d never have a penny. Oh, there’s always plenty for me when I want it, but she won’t spend it on herself. I can’t make her. But I’ll get even with her some day, you see if I don’t. I’ll plunge her into extravagance. What’s that shutter slamming for? I tell you I don’t like the way the wind is rising. When I think of that girl and her two babies——”
“Why don’t you come over on our piazza and sit awhile?” suggested the visitor; to keep rolling over and over on a wheel of marital sympathy embarrassed him.
“No, I thank you, I rather think I’ll turn in early,” said Ranney, rising as the other had done. Mr. Laurence hurried home to his wife, childishly eager to startle her with his piece of news. Ranney was going to bed at nine-of-the-clock.
“Well, I’m glad he’s missed her for one evening,” she retorted viciously. “It won’t last, though.”
But the next night when she happened to stroll over to the dividing fence in the half gloom, she discerned a figure sitting on the steps. He rose and came slowly forward, as she spoke, removing the old felt basin from his head perfunctorily.
“It looks very lonely over here without Mrs. Ranney and the children,” she said.
“Yes, it does,” answered Mr. Ranney. He knocked his pipe ruminatively on the top rail. “I didn’t realize before what a helpless being a man is without his wife; I never can remember where she keeps the clean towels.”
“I suppose she felt that she needed the change,” suggested Mrs. Laurence, a little stiffly.
“Oh, I persuaded her to go. She didn’t want to leave me, but a girl has to see her family sometimes; it’s only right.” He took a long breath. “It’s only right. When the letter came I said she ought to go, I said: ‘Jean, I can get along; your place this summer is with your father and mother.’ She’s only been home once since I took her away—her family don’t like it very much. I had a hard time to get the scamp—regular stern-chase; but a man thinks a good bit more of a girl when he has to work to get her.”
“Yes, indeed,” responded Mrs. Laurence, though she didn’t think so at all—she adored the dear knowledge that she and Will had loved within five minutes by the watch. And to marry a woman and never care like this until she was gone! The thought gave her a shiver, as she confided later to her own husband, with her hand in his. Suppose Mr. Ranney’s appreciation of his little lonely wife had come too late?