His wife squeaked with alarm at his entrance. She had tossed her hat on the bed and her gown with it. She had taken off her stays and was still gasping with the relief. RoBards had vainly protested against her habit of spending half an hour drawing her corset strings so tight that she could hardly breathe, for the ridiculous purpose of distorting her perfect form, to make her bust high and her chest narrow.
She stood before him in a chemise and petticoat, looking very narrow without her great skirts, and startlingly the biped in her ribboned garters and white silk stockings.
“Get out, will you!” she stormed, “and let me change my clothes.”
Instead he put out the hostile Teen, and closing the door, locked it.
“Now, Patty, you’re going to talk to me. Has the fire reached your father’s home yet?”
A sniff was his only answer. It was enough.
“Then you’re not going back to it. You stay here.” He spoke with autocracy, but his hands pleaded as he said: “I can’t tell you how sorry I am that——”
“You can’t tell me anything. And if you lay your grimy hands on me, I’ll scratch your eyes out.”
He stood off and gazed at her, helpless as a mastiff looking down at a kitten with back arched and claws unsheathed. He could have crunched her bones with ease, but she held him at bay by her very petty prettiness.
He was so poor of spirit and resource that he stooped to say: