"It was an idiotic arrangement, just the same. I agreed because I
was sick. Dad thought I was all shot to pieces. But I'm all right
now and able to run my own business."
"Nevertheless, it was a bargain, and it will stand. If your father
were alive he'd make you live up to it."
"Hell! You talk as if I were a child," shouted her husband; and
his plump face was apoplectic with rage. "The title is in my name.
How could he make me do anything?"
"Nobody could force you," his wife said, quietly. "You are still
enough of a man to keep your word, I believe, so long as I observe
my part of our bargain?"
Ed, slightly mollified, agreed. "Of course I am; I never welched.
But I won't be treated as an incompetent, and I'm tired of these
eternal wrangles and jangles."
"You HAVE welched."
"Eh?" Austin frowned belligerently.
"You agreed to go away when you felt your appetite coming on, and
you promised to live clean, at least around home."
"Well?"
"Have you done it?"
"Certainly. I never said I'd cut out the booze entirely."
"What about your carousals at Brownsville?"
Austin subsided sullenly. "Other men have got full in
Brownsville.
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