“Oh, it might,” she returned, sobering.  “It might, if those people weren’t such frozen-faced smart Alecks.  If they’d had the decency to come down off the perch a little I probably wouldn’t think it was funny, but to see ’em sit up on their pedestal all the time they’re eating dirt—­well, I think it’s funny!  That girl sits up as if she was Queen Elizabeth, and expects people to wallow on the ground before her until they get near enough for her to give ’em a good kick with her old patched shoes—­oh, she’d do that, all right!—­and then she powders up and goes out to mash—­Bibbs sheridan!”

“Look here,” said Roscoe, heavily; “I don’t care about that one way or another.  If you’re through, I got something I want to talk to you about.  I was going to, that day just before we heard about Jim.”

At this Sibyl stiffened quickly; her eyes became intensely bright.  “What is it?”

“Well,” he began, frowning, “what I was going to say then—­” He broke off, and, becoming conscious that he was still holding the wet napkin in his hand, threw it pettishly into a corner.  “I never expected I’d have to say anything like this to anybody I married; but I was going to ask you what was the matter between you and Lamhorn.”

Sibyl uttered a sharp monosyllable.  “Well?”

“I felt the time had come for me to know about it,” he went on.  “You never told me anything—­”

“You never asked,” she interposed, curtly.

“Well, we’d got in a way of not talking much,” said Roscoe.  “It looks to me now as if we’d pretty much lost the run of each other the way a good many people do.  I don’t say it wasn’t my fault.  I was up early and down to work all day, and I’d come home tired at night, and want to go to bed soon as I’d got the paper read—­ unless there was some good musical show in town.  Well, you seemed all right until here lately, the last month or so, I began to see something was wrong.  I couldn’t help seeing it.”

“Wrong?” she said.  “What like?”

“You changed; you didn’t look the same.  You were all strung up and excited and fidgety; you got to looking peakid and run down.  Now then, Lamhorn had been going with us a good while, but I noticed that not long ago you got to picking on him about every little thing he did; you got to quarreling with him when I was there and when I wasn’t.  I could see you’d been quarreling whenever I came in and he was here.”

“Do you object to that?” asked Sibyl, breathing quickly.

“Yes—­when it injures my wife’s health!” he returned, with a quick lift of his eyes to hers.  “You began to run down just about the time you began falling out with him.”  He stepped close to her.  “See here, Sibyl, I’m going to know what it means.”

“Oh, you are?” she snapped.

“You’re trembling,” he said, gravely.

“Yes.  I’m angry enough to do more than tremble, you’ll find.  Go on!”