They gave her husband an excuse
for his venerable silk hat and his gilded glave. Sometimes as she
took her hands out of the dough and dried them on her apron to fasten
his sash about him, she felt all the glory of a medieval countess
buckling the armor on her doughty earl. She had never heard of such
persons, but she knew their epic uplift.
Now, Mr. Thropp had paid his dues and his insurance premiums
for years and years. They were his one extravagance. Also he had
persuaded Mrs. Thropp's brother Sol to do the same. Sol had died
recently and left his insurance money to Mrs. Thropp. Sol's own wife,
after cherishing long-deferred hopes of spending that money herself,
had been hauled away first. She never got that insurance money.
Neither did any one else; the central office in New York failed
to pay up.
The annual convention was about to be held in the metropolis, and
there was to be a tremendous investigation of the insurance scandal.
Adna was elected the delegate of the Nimrim chapter, for he was known
to be a demon in a money-fight.
And this was the glittering news that Adna brought home. Small wonder
it spilled his coffee. And that wife of his not only had to go and
yell at him about a little coffee-stain, but she had to announce that
she hardly saw how she could get ready to go right away--and who was
to look after those children?
Adna's jaw fell. Perhaps he had ventured on dreams of being set free
in New York all by himself.
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