had
been sure of the size and of Marie's preference in stones. Since he
lacked detailed information, he decided to wait, but he intimated
plainly to the clerk that he would return in a few days.

It was just as well that he did decide to wait, for when he tried again
to see Marie he failed altogether. Marie had left town. Her mother, with
an acrid tone of resentment, declared that she did not know any
more than the man in the moon where Marie had gone, but that she
"suspicioned" that some fool had told Marie where Bud was, and that
Marie had gone traipsing after him. She had taken the baby along, which
was another piece of foolishness which her mother would never have
permitted had she been at home when Marie left.

Joe did not take the matter seriously, though he was disappointed at
having made a fruitless trip to San Jose. He did not believe that
Marie had done anything more than take a vacation from her mother's
sharp-tongued rule, and for that he could not blame her, after having
listened for fifteen minutes to the lady's monologue upon the subject
of selfish, inconsiderate, ungrateful daughters. Remembering Marie's
attitude toward Bud, he did not believe that she had gone hunting him.

Yet Marie had done that very thing. True, she had spent a sleepless
night fighting the impulse, and a harassed day trying to make up her
mind whether to write first, or whether to go and trust to the element
of surprise to help plead her cause with Bud; whether to take Lovin
Child with her, or leave him with her mother.

She definitely decided to write Bud a short note and ask him if he
remembered having had a wife and baby, once upon a time, and if he never
wished that he had them still. She wrote the letter, crying a
little over it along toward the last, as women will. But it sounded
cold-blooded and condemnatory. She wrote another, letting a little
of her real self into the lines. But that sounded sentimental and
moving-pictury, and she knew how Bud hated cheap sentimentalism.

So she tore them both up and put them in the little heating stove,
and lighted a match and set them burning, and watched them until they
withered down to gray ash, and then broke up the ashes and scattered
them amongst the cinders. Marie, you must know, had learned a good many
things, one of which was the unwisdom of whetting the curiosity of a
curious woman.

After that she proceeded to pack a suit case for herself and Lovin
Child, seizing the oppor