n there by the Inn, and take her along with him when the travel
wasn't too heavy. She could stay at either end of the run, just as she
took a notion. Wouldn't hurt the kid a bit--he'd be bigger then, and the
outdoors would make him grow like a pig. Thinking of these things, Bud
walked briskly, whistling as he neared the little green house, so that
Marie would know who it was, and would not be afraid when he stepped up
on the front porch.

He stopped whistling rather abruptly when he reached the house, for it
was dark. He tried the door and found it locked. The key was not in the
letter box where they always kept it for the convenience of the first
one who returned, so Bud went around to the back and climbed through the
pantry window. He fell over a chair, bumped into the table, and damned
a few things. The electric light was hung in the center of the room by
a cord that kept him groping and clutching in the dark before he finally
touched the elusive bulb with his fingers and switched on the light.

The table was set for a meal--but whether it was dinner or supper Bud
could not determine. He went into the little sleeping room and turned on
the light there, looked around the empty room, grunted, and tiptoed into
the bedroom. (In the last month he had learned to enter on his toes,
lest he waken the baby.) He might have saved himself the bother, for the
baby was not there in its new gocart. The gocart was not there, Marie
was not there--one after another these facts impressed themselves upon
Bud's mind, even before he found the letter propped against the clock
in the orthodox manner of announcing unexpected departures. Bud read the
letter, crumpled it in his fist, and threw it toward the little heating
stove. "If that's the way yuh feel about it, I'll tell the world you can
go and be darned!" he snorted, and tried to let that end the matter so
far as he was concerned. But he could not shake off the sense of having
been badly used. He did not stop to consider that while he was working
off his anger, that day, Marie had been rocking back and forth, crying
and magnifying the quarrel as she dwelt upon it, and putting a new and
sinister meaning into Bud's ill-considered utterances. By the time Bud
was thinking only of the bargain car's hidden faults, Marie had reached
the white heat of resentment that demanded vigorous action. Marie was
packing a suitcase and meditating upon the scorching letter she meant to
write.

Judging fr