Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/286

274 Bailey said indignantly: "Well, I 'm tired of this whole business. We don't need a girl and we can't afford one. Leave the poor old woman alone. The house was a good deal happier as it was—besides being cheaper."

"Very well," the wife replied. "If you think more of her crazy notions than you do of my health—"

She went out to a dairy restaurant for luncheon and bought some food in a delicatessen shop and hid it in her trunk. She ate nothing for dinner except some tapioca pudding, which she had made herself, and it was so badly cooked that it disagreed with her. She was ill in the morning, refused to have her breakfast brought to her in bed, and sent Bailey to his work, to worry about her. Her mother came to see her at mid-day with a bowl of chicken broth and some buttered toast. She refused it. "If I want anything to eat," she said, "I 'll cook it myself."

Mrs. Joliffe put the food on the dresser and went to her room to pack her small belongings. "I can't stay here," she told herself, "an' I don't know where I 'll go to. I 'll have to get work. I 'll have to get work somewhere, but I 'll go to the poorhouse before I 'll stan' fer this. I 've slaved fer her all me life, an' I 'd work fer her now, till the flesh dropped off me fingers, if she wanted me. But she don't. I 'll go—an' be danged to her!" She wiped her cheeks on the end of her apron. "God help Bailey. I 'm glad it 's him that 's got to stay an' not me."

She stripped her little room, packed her pictures of