"Yes, but this is really serious. I'm damned if I give up writing."
"Or marry Chrysos Lacy?"
"Or that, either. Do you think I want a red-headed wife? And I've never spoken a dozen words to her, either. And I'll pick out my own wife. What does my aunt think I am? I wish I were in love with somebody's parlour-maid. B'jinks! I'd marry her, just to see my aunt's expression——"
"Oh, stop your fulminations," said Quarren, laughing. "That's the way with you artistic people; you're a passionate pack of pups!"
"I'm not as passionate as my aunt!" retorted Westguard wrathfully. "Do you consider her artistic? She's a meddlesome, malicious, domineering, insolent, evil old woman, and I told her so."
Quarren managed to stifle his laughter for a moment, but his sense of the ludicrous was keen, and the scene his fancy evoked sent him off into mirth uncontrollable.
Westguard eyed him gloomily; ominous clouds poured from "The Weather-breeder."
"Perhaps it's funny," he said, "but she and I cannot stand each other, and this time it's all off for keeps. I told her if she sent me another check I'd send it back. That settles it, doesn't it?"
"You're foolish, Karl——"
"Never mind. If I can't keep myself alive in an untrammelled and self-respecting exercise of my profession—" His voice ended in a gurgling growl. Then, as though the recollections of his injuries at the hands of his aunt still stung him, he reared up in his chair: