Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/288

 "Or," and he described a graceful circle with his cigarette hand; "why can't you be a wife like Norma Howes then. Look at Norma with her stock farms and her horse shows and her operatic star venture and her penchant for hanging round race tracks—and her far flung battle line of social engagements. She sails the seas like a privateer. She unpacks her trunks at Palm Beach or Newport or Coronado and she has a wonderful time. I doubt if she has a lonely minute.

"And do you think she spends much time fretting because her husband isn't along? Not much, she don't. She knows he's got to be at his desk chiseling out money for her to spend—good old Tom Howes, with the best set of selling brains under his bald bean that there is in the automobile industry save and excepting only one."

"Which modesty forbids you to mention," cut in his wife with biting scorn.

"Exactly," conceded George with the utmost complacency and blundered on with: "Think Tom crabs her when she comes home, broke and tired of the world, and ready to settle down to a long spell of connubial bliss? Not on your life. Tom's face lights up like factory windows at sunset and he gathers her into his arms like Romeo reaching for Juliet. They're happy, darn it! That's partnership—that's mutual ac-