Baby Mine Part 9

"Very likely," answered Zoie, unperturbed. "But so long as I am your lawful wedded wife----" she emphasised the "lawful"--"I shan't let any harm come to you, if _I_ can help it." She lifted her eyes to heaven bidding it to bear witness to her martyrdom and looking for all the world like a stained gla.s.s saint.

"Oh, no!" shouted Alfred, almost hysterical at his apparent failure to make himself understood. "You wouldn't let any harm come to me. Oh, no.

You've only made me the greatest joke in Chicago," he shouted. "You've only made me such a laughing stock that I have to leave it. That's all--that's all!"

"Leave Chicago!" exclaimed Zoie incredulously. Then regaining her self-composure, she edged her way close to him and looked up into his eyes in baby-like wonderment. "Why, Allie, where are we going?" Her small arm crept up toward his shoulder. Alfred pushed it from him rudely.

"WE are not going," he a.s.serted in a firm, measured voice. "_I_ am going. Where's my hat?" And again he started in search of his absent headgear.

"Oh, Allie!" she exclaimed, and this time there was genuine alarm in her voice, "you wouldn't leave me?"

"Wouldn't I, though?" sneered Alfred. Before he knew it, Zoie's arms were about him--she was pleading desperately.

"Now see here, Allie, you may call me all the names you like," she cried with great self-abas.e.m.e.nt, "but you shan't--you SHAN'T go away from Chicago."

"Oh, indeed?" answered Alfred as he shook himself free of her. "I suppose you'd like me to go on with this cat and dog existence. You'd like me to stay right here and pay the bills and take care of you, while you flirt with every Tom, d.i.c.k and Harry in town."

"It's only your horrid disposition that makes you talk like that,"

whimpered Zoie. "You know very well that I never cared for anybody but you."

"Until you GOT me, yes," a.s.sented Alfred, "and NOW you care for everybody BUT me." She was about to object, but he continued quickly.

"Where you MEET your gentlemen friends is beyond me. _I_ don't introduce them to you."

"I should say not," agreed Zoie, and there was a touch of vindictiveness in her voice. "The only male creature that you ever introduced to me was the family dog."

"I introduce every man who's fit to meet you," declared Alfred with an air of great pride.

"That doesn't speak very well for your acquaintances," snipped Zoie.

Even HER temper was beginning to a.s.sert itself.

"I won't bicker like this," declared Alfred.

"That's what you always say, when you can't think of an answer,"

retorted Zoie.

"You mean when I'm tired of answering your nonsense!" thundered Alfred.

CHAPTER IX

Realising that she was rapidly losing ground by exercising her advantage over Alfred in the matter of quick retort, Zoie, with her customary cunning, veered round to a more conciliatory tone. "Well," she cooed, "suppose I DID eat lunch with a man?"

"Ah!" shrieked Alfred, as though he had at last run his victim to earth.

She retreated with her fingers crossed. "I only said suppose," she reminded him quickly. Then she continued in a tone meant to draw from him his heart's most secret confidence. "Didn't you ever eat lunch with any woman but me?"

"Never!" answered Alfred firmly.

There was an unmistakable expression of pleasure on Zoie's small face, but she forced back the smile that was trying to creep round her lips, and sidled toward Alfred, with eyes properly downcast. "Then I'm very sorry I did it," she said solemnly, "and I'll never do it again."

"So!" cried Alfred with renewed indignation. "You admit it?"

"Just to please you, dear," explained Zoie sweetly, as though she were doing him the greatest possible favour.

"To please me?" gasped Alfred. "Do you suppose it pleases me to know that you are carrying on the moment my back is turned, making a fool of me to my friends?"

"Your friends?" cried Zoie with a sneer. This time it was her turn to be angry. "So! It's your FRIENDS that are worrying you!" In her excitement she tossed Alfred's now damaged hat into the chair just behind her. He was far too overwrought to see it. "_I_ haven't done you any harm," she continued wildly. "It's only what you think your friends think."

"You haven't done me any harm?" repeated Alfred, in her same tragic key, "Oh no! Oh no! You've only cheated me out of everything I expected to get out of life! That's all!"

Zoie came to a full stop and waited for him to enumerate the various treasures that he had lost by marrying her. He did so.

"Before we were married," he continued, "you pretended to adore children. You started your humbugging the first day I met you. I refer to little Willie Peck."

A hysterical giggle very nearly betrayed her. Alfred continued:

"I was fool enough to let you know that I admire women who like children. From that day until the hour that I led you to the altar, you'd fondle the ugliest little brats that we met in the street, but the moment you GOT me----"

"Alfred!" gasped Zoie. This was really going too far.

"Yes, I repeat it!" shouted Alfred, pounding the table with his fist for emphasis. "The moment you GOT me, you declared that all children were horrid little insects, and that someone ought to sprinkle bug-powder on them."

"Oh!" protested Zoie, shocked less by Alfred's interpretation of her sentiments, than by the vulgarity with which he expressed them.

"On another occasion," declared Alfred, now carried away by the recital of his long pent up wrongs, "you told me that all babies should be put in cages, s.h.i.+pped West, and kept in pens until they got to be of an interesting age. 'Interesting age!'" he repeated with a sneer, "meaning old enough to take YOU out to luncheon, I suppose."

"I never said any such thing," objected Zoie.

"Well, that was the idea," insisted Alfred. "I haven't your glib way of expressing myself."

"You manage to express yourself very well," retorted Zoie. "When you have anything DISAGREEABLE to say. As for babies," she continued tentatively, "I think they are all very well in their PLACE, but they were NEVER meant for an APARTMENT."

"I offered you a house in the country," shouted Alfred.

"The country!" echoed Zoie. "How could I live in the country, with people being murdered in their beds every night? Read the papers."

"Always an excuse," sighed Alfred resignedly. "There always HAS been and there always would be if I'd stay to listen. Well, for once," he declared, "I'm glad that we have no children. If we had, I might feel some obligation to keep up this farce of a marriage. As it is," he continued, "YOU are free and _I_ am free." And with a courtly wave of his arm, he dismissed Zoie and the entire subject, and again he started in pursuit of Mary and his hat.

"If it's your freedom you wish," pouted Zoie with an abused air, "you might have said so in the first place."

Alfred stopped in sheer amazement at the cleverness with which the little minx turned his every statement against him.

"It's not very manly of you," she continued, "to abuse me just because you've found someone whom you like better."

"That's not true," protested Alfred hotly, "and you know it's not true."

Little did he suspect the trap into which she was leading him.

"Then you DON'T love anybody more than you do me?" she cried eagerly, and she gazed up at him with adoring eyes.