“Settin’ a fine example to the children,” Mr. Higginbotham snorted, suddenly, in the silence for which his wife was responsible and which he resented.  Sometimes he almost wished she would oppose him more.  “If he does it again, he’s got to get out.  Understand!  I won’t put up with his shinanigan—­debotchin’ innocent children with his boozing.”  Mr. Higginbotham liked the word, which was a new one in his vocabulary, recently gleaned from a newspaper column.  “That’s what it is, debotchin’—­there ain’t no other name for it.”

Still his wife sighed, shook her head sorrowfully, and stitched on.  Mr. Higginbotham resumed the newspaper.

“Has he paid last week’s board?” he shot across the top of the newspaper.

She nodded, then added, “He still has some money.”

“When is he goin’ to sea again?”

“When his pay-day’s spent, I guess,” she answered.  “He was over to San Francisco yesterday looking for a ship.  But he’s got money, yet, an’ he’s particular about the kind of ship he signs for.”

“It’s not for a deck-swab like him to put on airs,” Mr. Higginbotham snorted.  “Particular!  Him!”

“He said something about a schooner that’s gettin’ ready to go off to some outlandish place to look for buried treasure, that he’d sail on her if his money held out.”

“If he only wanted to steady down, I’d give him a job drivin’ the wagon,” her husband said, but with no trace of benevolence in his voice.  “Tom’s quit.”

His wife looked alarm and interrogation.

“Quit to-night.  Is goin’ to work for Carruthers.  They paid ’m more’n I could afford.”

“I told you you’d lose ’m,” she cried out.  “He was worth more’n you was giving him.”

“Now look here, old woman,” Higginbotham bullied, “for the thousandth time I’ve told you to keep your nose out of the business.  I won’t tell you again.”

“I don’t care,” she sniffled.  “Tom was a good boy.”  Her husband glared at her.  This was unqualified defiance.

“If that brother of yours was worth his salt, he could take the wagon,” he snorted.

“He pays his board, just the same,” was the retort.  “An’ he’s my brother, an’ so long as he don’t owe you money you’ve got no right to be jumping on him all the time.  I’ve got some feelings, if I have been married to you for seven years.”

“Did you tell ‘m you’d charge him for gas if he goes on readin’ in bed?” he demanded.

Mrs. Higginbotham made no reply.  Her revolt faded away, her spirit wilting down into her tired flesh.  Her husband was triumphant.  He had her.  His eyes snapped vindictively, while his ears joyed in the sniffles she emitted.  He extracted great happiness from squelching her, and she squelched easily these days, though it had been different in the first years of their married life, before the brood of children and his incessant nagging had sapped her energy.