Her
eyes were red and damp. The furniture could have been carried away on
a pushcart, but no pushcart man would have removed it as a gift.
The door opened to admit Mr. Peters. His fox-terrier eyes expressed
a wish. His wife's diagnosis located correctly the seat of it, but
misread it hunger instead of thirst.
"You'll get nothing more to eat till night," she said, looking out of
the window again. "Take your hound-dog's face out of the room."
Mr. Peters's eye calculated the distance between them. By taking her
by surprise it might be possible to spring upon her, overthrow her,
and apply the throttling tactics of which he had boasted to his
waiting comrades. True, it had been only a boast; never yet had he
dared to lay violent hands upon her; but with the thoughts of the
delicious, cool bock or Culmbacher bracing his nerves, he was near
to upsetting his own theories of the treatment due by a gentleman
to a lady. But, with his loafer's love for the more artistic and
less strenuous way, he chose diplomacy first, the high card in the
game--the assumed attitude of success already attained.
"You have a dollar," he said, loftily, but significantly in the tone
that goes with the lighting of a cigar--when the properties are at
hand.
"I have," said Mrs. Peters, producing the bill from her bosom and
crackling it, teasingly.
"I am offered a position in a--in a tea store," said Mr. Peters. "I
am to begin work to-morrow. But it will be necessary for me to buy a
pair of--"
"You are a liar," said Mrs.
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