"It's final enough," he answered.
He shambled across the room to her side, moving like a bear. Like a bear's his exterior was rough, shaggy, and seemed not to fit him well. His face was irregularly square, homely, thoughtful, and humorous. "Want to cry?" he asked.
"No. I want to swear."
"Go ahead."
Downstairs a door opened and closed. There followed the rhythmic crepitation of ice against metal.
"There's Ralph home," interpreted the wife. "Call down and tell him to shake up one for me."
"Better not."
"Oh, you be damned!" she retorted, twinkling at him. "You've finished your day's job as a physician. I need one."
As he obediently went out she mused, with the instinct of the competent housekeeper:
"Gin's gone to twenty-five dollars a gallon. That'll rasp poor old Ralph. I wonder how much this will jar him." By "this" she meant the news which she had just forced from the reluctant lips of Dr. Robert Osterhout. She pursued her line of thought. "Who'll take over the house? The girls know nothing about running it. Perhaps he'll marry again. He's very young for fifty."