Madden [with exasperation]. Oh!
[He brings his fist down on the table with a limp whack, then turns and looks helplessly toward the door at the left. After a moment this door starts to open. Madden turns quickly to the front, trying to compose his face and busying himself with the bills. The door continues to open, and Mrs. Madden now issues from it lazily. She is thirty-two years old, and a good half head taller than her husband. Where he is thin and bony, she has already begun to lose her figure. Her yellow hair, the color of molasses kisses, is at once greasy and untidy, and seems ready to come to pieces. Her face is beginning to lose its contour—the uninspired face of a lower middle-class woman who has once been pretty in a rather cheap way. She is sloppily dressed in showy purple silk. Her skirt is short, and she wears brand new, high, shiny, mahogany-colored boots. She has powdered her nose.]
Mrs. Madden [uninterestedly, in a slow, flat, nasal voice]. How long y' been home? Yer pretty late f'r Sat'rdy.
Madden [still looking down and trying to control his feelings]. The head bookkeeper kept me, checkin' up the mill pay roll. I been here [consulting his watch] just seven minutes.
Mrs. Madden [yawning]. Thanks. Yer s' darn acc'rate, Jim. I didn' really wanta know.
[He looks at another bill and writes down the amount on the same piece of paper as before, keeping his head averted so that she may not see his face.]
Mrs. Madden. Jim. [With lazy self-satisfaction.] Look up an' glimpse yer wifey in 'r new boots. [She draws up her skirts sufficiently to show the boots.]
[He looks up unwillingly and makes a movement of exasperation.]
Madden. Oh, Florrie!
Mrs. Madden. W'at's a matter? Don'choo like 'em?