y. "If he don't quit shootin' off his mouth he'll get fired from
the shops. And then what'll we do? He don't consider me. But I can tell
you one thing all right, all right. I'll not go back to the laundry."
She held her right hand up and spoke with the solemnity of an oath. "Not
so's you can see it. Never again for yours truly."

"Oh, I know what you're drivin' at," Bert said with asperity. "An' all I
can tell you is, livin' or dead, in a job or out, no matter what happens
to me, if you will lead that way, you will, an' there's nothin' else to
it."

"I guess I kept straight before I met you," she came back with a toss of
the head. "And I kept straight after I met you, which is going some if
anybody should ask you."

Hot words were on Bert's tongue, but Saxon intervened and brought about
peace. She was concerned over the outcome of their marriage. Both were
highstrung, both were quick and irritable, and their continual clashes
did not augur well for their future.

The safety razor was a great achievement for Saxon. Privily she
conferred with a clerk she knew in Pierce's hardware store and made the
purchase. On Sunday morning, after breakfast, when Billy was starting
to go to the barber shop, she led him into the bedroom, whisked a towel
aside, and revealed the razor box, shaving mug, soap, brush, and lather
all ready. Billy recoiled, then came back to make curious investigation.
He gazed pityingly at the safety razor.

"Huh! Call that a man's tool!"

"It'll do the work," she said. "It does it for thousands of men every
day."

But Billy shook his head and backed away.

"You shave three times a week," she urged. "That's forty-five cents.
Call it half a dollar, and there are fifty-two weeks in the year.
Twenty-six dollars a year just for shaving. Come on, dear, and try it.
Lots of men swear by it."

He shook his head mutinously, and the cloudy deeps of his eyes grew more
cloudy. She loved that sullen handsomeness that made him look so boyish,
and, laughing and kissing him, she forced him into a chair, got off his
coat, and unbuttoned shirt and undershirt and turned them in.

Threatening him with, "If you open your mouth to kick I'll shove it in,"
she coated his face with lather.

"Wait a minute," she checked him, as he reached desperately for the
razor. "I've been watching the barbers from the sidewalk. This is what
they do after the lather is on."

And thereupon she proceeded to rub the lather in with her fi