nd cruel like all other
men who don't care how they wring the life blood out of women's hearts
and are willing to use their children to do it with. Even the law
doesn't help us poor helpless creatures and you can take our children
and go with them to the ends of the earth and leave us suffering. I have
gone on and believed that you were not like what the women say all men
are and that you cared whether you hurt people or not, but now I see
that you are just the same and you'll take my baby away if you want
to--and I can do nothing to prevent it--nothing in the wide world--I am
completely and absolutely helpless--you coward, you!"

When that awful word, the worst word that a woman can use to a man, left
my lips, a flame shot up into his eyes that I thought would burn me up,
but in a half-second it was extinguished by the strangest thing in the
world--for the situation--a perfect flood of mirth. He sat down in his
chair and shook all over with his head in his hands until I saw tears
creep through his fingers. I had calmed down so suddenly that I was
about to begin to cry in good earnest when he wiped his eyes and said
with a low laugh in his throat:

"The case is yours, Molly, settled out of court, and the
'possession-nine-points-of-the-law clause' works in some cases for a
woman against a man. Generally speaking, anyway, the pup belongs to the
man who can whistle him down and you can whistle Bill from me any day.
I'm just his father and what I think or want doesn't matter. You had
better take him and keep him!"

"I intend to." I answered haughtily, uncertain as to whether I had
better give in and be agreeable or stay prepared to cry in case there
was further argument. But suddenly a strange diffidence came into his
eyes and he looked away from me as he said in queer hesitating words:

"You see, Mrs. Molly, I thought from now on your life wouldn't have
exactly a place for Bill. Have you considered that you have trained him
to demand you all the time and all of you? How would you manage
Bill--and--and other claims?"

And if there is a contagious thing in this world it is embarrassment. I
never felt anything worse in all my life than the shame that swept over
me in a great hot wave when that look came into his eyes and made me
realize just exactly what I had been saying to him, about what, and how
I had said it. I stood perfectly still, shook all over like a leaf, and
wondered if I would ever be able to raise my eyes f