out of the house, had he not discovered an express wagon standing
in front of the door when he went home about noon to see if Marie
had come back. Before he had recovered to the point of profane
speech, the express man appeared, coming out of the house, bent
nearly double under the weight of Marie's trunk. Behind him in
the doorway Bud got a glimpse of Marie's mother.

That settled it. Bud turned around and hurried to the nearest
drayage company, and ordered a domestic wrecking crew to the
scene; in other words, a packer and two draymen and a dray. He'd
show 'em. Marie and her mother couldn't put anything over on him
--he'd stand over that furniture with a sheriff first.

He went back and found Marie's mother still there, packing
dishes and doilies and the like. They had a terrible row, and all
the nearest neighbors inclined ears to doors ajar--getting an
earful, as Bud contemptuously put it. He finally led Marie's
mother to the front door and set her firmly outside. Told her
that Marie had come to him with no more than the clothes she had,
and that his money had bought every teaspoon and every towel and
every stick of furniture in the darned place, and he'd be
everlastingly thus-and-so if they were going to strong-arm the
stuff off him now. If Marie was too good to live with him, why,
his stuff was too good for her to have.

Oh, yes, the neighbors certainly got an earful, as the town
gossips proved when the divorce suit seeped into the papers. Bud
refused to answer the proceedings, and was therefore ordered to
pay twice as much alimony as he could afford to pay; more, in
fact, than all his domestic expense had amounted to in the