“Goin’ on eight years come next October, and we got three childern. I been right poorly lately. Don’t seem to take as much interest in worshin’ as I useter.”
“Washing!” Marie Louise exclaimed. “You don’t wash, do you? That is, I mean to say––professionally?”
“Yes, I worsh. Do right smart of work, too.”
Marie Louise was overwhelmed. She had a hundred 160 thousand dollars, and her sister was a––washerwoman! It was intolerable. She glanced at Jake.
“But Mr.––your husband––”
“Oh, Jake, he works––off and on. But he ain’t got what you might call a hankerin’ for it. He can take work or let it alone. I can’t say as much for him when it comes to licker. Fact is, some the women say, ‘Why, Mrs. Nuddle, how do you ever––’”
“Your name isn’t––it isn’t Nuddle, is it?” Marie Louise broke in.
“Sure it is. What did you think it was?”
So the sleeping brother-in-law was the mysterious inquirer. That solved one of her day’s puzzles and solved it very tamely. So many of life’s mysteries, like so many of fiction’s, peter out at the end. They don’t sustain.
Marie Louise still belonged to the obsolescent generation that believed it a husband’s duty to support his wife by his own labor. The thought of her sister supporting a worthless husband by her own toil was odious. The first task was to get Jake to work. It was only natural that she should think of her own new mania.