nstance, he might have gone
over to see Marie before he moved the furniture 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 fourteen months that he had been married.
Also Marie was awarded the custody of the child and, because Marie's
mother had represented Bud to be a violent man who was a menace to her
daughter's safety--and proved it by the neighbors who had seen and heard
so much--Bud was served with a legal paper that wordily enjoined him
from annoying Marie with his presence.

That unnecessary insult snapped the last thread of Bud's regret for what
had happened. He sold the furniture and the automobile, took the money
to the judge that had tried the case, told the judge a few wholesome
truths, and laid the pile of money on the desk.

"That cleans me out, Judge," he said stolidly. "I wasn't such a bad
husband, at that. I got sore--b