of 'em. Too glad to
get away from her everlastin' tongue-clackin'. But when 'twas put right
up to me this way, I--I declare I was all fussed up. I felt sick and I
guess I looked so. Emeline was lookin' at me and seemin'ly waitin' for
me to say somethin'; yet I couldn't say it. And Bennie D. laughed, quiet
but wicked.

"That laugh fixed me. I swung round and lit into him.

"'You mind your own business,' I roars. 'Ain't you ashamed, makin'
trouble with a man's wife in his own house?'

"'I was under the impression the house belonged to my sister-in-law,' he
says. And again I was knocked off my pins.

"'You great big loafer!' I yelled at him; 'settin' here doin' nothin'
but raisin' the divil generally! I--I--'

"He jumped as if I'd stuck a brad-awl into him. The shocked expression
came across his face again, and he runs to Emeline and takes her arm.

"'Sister, sister,' he says, quick, but gentle, 'this is no place for
you. Language like that is . . . there! there! don't you think you'd
better leave the room?'

"She didn't go. As I remember it now, it keeps comin' back to me that
she didn't go. She just stood still and looked at me. And then she says:
'Seth, why did you lie to me?'"

"'I didn't lie,' I shouts. 'I forgot, I tell you. I never thought that
windmill of a Christy woman was enough importance to remember. I didn't
lie to you--I never did. Oh, Emeline, you know I didn't. What's the
matter with you and me, anyway? We used to be all right and now we're
all wrong.'

"'One of us is,' says Bennie D. That was the final straw that choked the
camel.

"'Yes,' I says to him, 'that's right, one of us is, and I don't know
which. But I know this: you and I can't stay together in this house any
longer.'

"I can see that room now, as 'twas when I said that. Us three lookin' at
each other, and the clock a-tickin', and everything else still as still.
I choked, but I kept on.

"'I mean it,' I says. 'Either you clear out of this house or I do.'

"And, while the words was on my lips, again it came to me strong that it
wa'n't really my house at all. I turned to my wife.

"'Emeline,' says I, 'it's got to be. You must tell him to go, or else--'

"She'd been lookin' at me again with that kind of queer look in her
eyes, almost a hopeful look, seem's if 'twas, and yet it couldn't have
been, of course. Now she drawed a long breath.

"'I can't tell him to go, Seth,' says she. 'I promised to give him a
home as long as I had