Page:The Prussian officer, and other stories, Lawrence, 1914.djvu/260

 more valuable and a more conspicuous present. She would have to ask her mother to give them to her, to explain their presence. She made a little plan in her head. And she was extraordinarily pleased. As for Sam Adams, even if he saw her wearing them, he would not give her away. What fun, if he saw her wearing his ear-rings! She would pretend she had inherited them from her grandmother, her mother’s mother. She laughed to herself as she went down town in the afternoon, the pretty drops dangling in front of her curls. But she saw no one of importance.

Whiston came home tired and depressed. All day the male in him had been uneasy, and this had fatigued him. She was curiously against him, inclined, as she sometimes was nowadays, to make mock of him and jeer at him and cut him off. He did not understand this, and it angered him deeply. She was uneasy before him.

She knew he was in a state of suppressed irritation. The veins stood out on the backs of his hands, his brow was drawn stiffly. Yet she could not help goading him.

“What did you do wi’ that white stocking?” he asked, out of a gloomy silence, his voice strong and brutal.

“I put it in a drawer—why?” she replied flippantly.

“Why didn’t you put it on the fire back?” he said harshly. “What are you hoarding it up for?”

“I’m not hoarding it up,” she said. “I’ve got a pair.”

He relapsed into gloomy silence. She, unable to