“Is there anything to eat in the house?” was Nat’s way of turning the edge of the altercation.
Milly shrugged her shoulders. Nathan went out into the cluttered, odorous kitchen and hunted around for food.
He found a stale frankfurter and a piece of soggy pie. He drew a glass of cold water and sat down to satisfy his hunger with the indigestible mess.
“Mary cut her finger this afternoon,” announced the wife. “I had to get Doc Johnson to see to it.” Milly, it had developed, was one of those persons who summon a doctor for every indisposition known to medicine from plain old-fashioned stomachache to falling off the roof and breaking a neck.
“I’ve got something else to think about now, Milly, besides Mary cutting her finger.”
“Yeah! I s’pose you have. You’re just like your father. A devil of a lot you care about your women folks!” Milly rammed the fire angrily and poked most of the live coals through into the ash-pan. “The fire’s out!” she snapped. “And there ain’t any wood.”
“But I gave you money to buy wood only last Friday.”
“Dad’s out o’ work. Nellie’d have to give up her pianner lessons if Ma didn’t have money from somewheres till dad’s took on again. I loaned it to her. Blood’s a little thicker in our family than it is in yours, Nat Forge!”
The food Nat had eaten failed to digest. He was tired and distraught and broken. But he kept his temper.
“Let’s go to bed and talk it over in the morning,” he begged. “I told you I’m nearly all in. Can’t you see it?”