's a fool some ways for a woman
that has her brains."

He stated this opinion with a detached, impersonal irresponsibility, and
began to prepare himself for the plunge into the damp cold of the
Endbury January. His wife preserved a dignified silence, and in the
middle of a sentence of his later talk, which had again turned on his
grievance about never seeing Lydia, she got up, went into the hall, and
began to use the telephone for her morning shopping. Her conversation
gave the impression that she was ordering veal cutlets, maidenhair
ferns, wax floor-polish, chiffon ruching, and closed carriages, from one
and the same invisible interlocutor, who seemed impartially unable to
supply any of these needs without rather testy exhortation. Mrs. Emery
was one of the women who are always well served by "tradespeople," as
she now called them, "and a good reason why," she was wont to explain
with self-gratulatory grimness.

The Judge waited, one hand on the door-knob, squaring his jaw over his
muffler, and listening with a darkening face to the interminable
succession of purchases. After a time he released the door-knob,
loosened his muffler, and sat down heavily, his eyes fixed on his wife's
back.

After an interval, Mrs. Emery paused in the act of ringing up another
number, looked over her shoulder, saw him there and inquired uneasily,
"What are you waiting for? You'll catch cold with all your things on.
Isn't Dr. Melton always telling you to be careful?"

She felt a vague resentment at his being there "after hours," as she
might have put it, so definitely had long usage accustomed her to a
sense of solitary proprietorship of the house except at certain fixed
and not very frequent periods. She almost felt that he was eavesdropping
while she "ran her own business." There was also his remark about
Marietta and kites, unatoned for as yet. She had not forgotten that she
"owed him one," as Madeleine Hollister light-heartedly phrased the
connubial balanced relationship which had come under her irreverent and
keen observation. A cumulative sharpness from all these causes was in
her voice as she remarked, "Didn't I tell you that Lydia--"

Judge Emery's voice in answer was as sharp as her own. "Look-y here,
Susan, I bet you've ordered fifty dollars' worth of stuff since you
stood there."

"Well, what if I have?" She was up in arms in an instant against his
breaking a long-standing treaty between them--a treaty not tacit, but
fre