"I want a cheerful wife, one with a song to her,
and not a dam' female elder around the house. A
good woman is a -- a jewel, but when your goodness
gives you a face ache it's... it's something different,
it's a nuisance. I'd almost rather have a wife
that wasn't so good but had some give to her." He
sat down, clutching a heavy shoe which came off
suddenly. Lettice was as immobile as the chest of
drawers.

"Goddy knows," he burst out again, "it's solemn
enough around here anyhow with Sim Caley's old
woman like a grave hole, and now you go and get
it too... Berry might put up with it, and Sim's
just fool-hearted, but a regular man wouldn't abide
it, he'd -- he'd go to Paris, where the women are
civilized and dance all night." He muttered an
unintelligible period about French widows and pink.
..."Buried before my time," he proclaimed. He
stood with his head grizzled and harsh above an absurdly
flowing nightshirt. In the deepening light
Lettice's countenance seemed thinner than usual, her
round, staring eyes were frightened, as though she
had seen in the night the visible apparition of the
curse of suffering laid upon all birth.

"You look like you've taken leave of your wits,"
he exclaimed in an accumulated exasperation; "say
something." He leaned across the bed, and, grasp-

[[232]]

p231 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p232w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p233

v?