"Well, we'll all certainly miss you." Henley was too honest--at least in domestic matters--to know that his assertion was insincere, and accustomed as he was in his dealings among men to assume exactly the shade of tone or set of face that went best with a statement, he now had as complete an air of regret and discomfort as the most exacting of wives could have wished.
"Well, I'm getting the drive I asked for," was her parting shot, and she leaned over and gave him a cold, stiff hand. "I'm taking it all by myself, as most married women have to do if they don't seek the attention of other men. But I'm going to do my duty to a human sufferer, and in that I'll get my reward."
He walked back to the store thoughtfully. "She's gone!" he said to himself. "She's ripping mad and got it in for me, that's certain. She's begun on a new line, and I'll bet she makes me smoke before she's through with me. I know what she wants well enough, but somehow I just can't do it. I might at one time, but I couldn't now to save my neck from the loop. The old man is plumb right. When a feller's love gets cold on the inside he can't warm it up by external applications. He's a matrimonial misfit, and the sooner he realizes it and is resigned the better he'll feel."
"Well, the old gal's gone," Wrinkle remarked that day at sundown when Henley came in at the gate and found him seated on a dismantled beehive in the yard. "I reckon you seed 'er spin through town. For a woman goin' out as a sick-nuss or spiritual comforter to a chap kicked by a high-steppin' filly she certainly had a supply of frills and ruffles. Them valises was packed as tight as a compressed cotton-bale. She left behind her one solid wail of woe. Jane is afraid she'll never gratify yore taste for grub as well as Het did, an' she's in thar now humpin' herself to contrive new concoctions. Het kept boarders long enough to git stingy, an' I told my wife to turn over a new leaf for a change. I driv' a fat chicken in a fence-corner just now, and held its legs while she chopped its spout off. She knows how to fry 'em, an' if she kin see well enough to pick the pin-feathers off it will be all right. I'd put her biscuits agin any ever baked."