A QUARREL AND A CRISIS

“Can you give me a few minutes’ time, Dicky?  I have something to tell you.”

Dicky put down the magazine with a bored air.  “What is it?” he asked shortly.

Involuntarily my thoughts flew back to the exquisite courtesy which had always been Dicky’s in the days before we were married.  There had been such a delicate reverence in his every tone and action.  I wondered if marriage changed all men as it had changed my husband.

I went to my room and brought the letter back to Dicky.  He read it through, and I saw his face grow blacker with each word.  When he came to the signature, he turned back to the beginning and read the epistle through again.  Then he crumpled it into a ball and threw it violently across the room.

“See here, my lady,” he exploded.  “I think it’s about time we came to a show-down over this business.  When I found that first letter from this lad, I asked you if he were a relative, and you said ‘No.’  Then you hand me this touching screed with its ‘nearest of kin’ twaddle, and speaking of leaving you a fortune.  Now what’s the answer?”

“Oh, hardly a fortune, Dicky,” I returned quietly.  “Jack has only a few thousand at the outside.”

I fear I was purposely provoking, but Dicky’s sneering, insulting manner roused every bit of spirit in me.

“A few thousand you’ll never touch as long as you are my wife,” stormed Dicky.  “But you are evading my question.”

“Oh, no, I’m not,” I said coolly.  “That real relationship between Jack and myself is so slight as to be practically nothing.  He is the son of a distant cousin of my mother’s.  Perhaps you remember that on the day you made the scene about the letter you had just emphasized your very close friendship for Mrs. Underwood in a fashion rather embarrassing to me.  I resolved that, to speak vulgarly, ’what was sauce for the gander,’ etc., and that I would put my friendship for Jack upon the same basis as yours for Mrs. Underwood.  So when you asked me whether or not Jack was a relative I said ‘No.’”

“That makes this letter an insult both to you and to me,” Dicky said venomously, his face black with anger.

I sprang to my feet, trembling with anger.

“Be careful,” I said icily.  “You don’t deserve an explanation, but you shall have one, and that is the last word I shall ever speak to you on the subject of Jack.  His letter is the truth.  I am his ’nearest of kin,’ save the cousins in Pennsylvania of whom he speaks.  He was orphaned in his babyhood and my mother’s only sister legally adopted him, and reared him as her own son.  We were practically raised together, for my mother and my aunt always lived near each other.  Jack was the only brother I ever knew.  I the only sister he had.

“When my aunt died she left him her little property with the understanding that he would always look after my mother and myself.  He kept his promise royally.  My mother and I owed him many, many kindnesses.  God forbid that I ever am given the opportunity to claim Jack’s property.  But if he should be killed”—­I choked upon the word—­“I shall take it and try to use it wisely, as he would have me do.”