Joe did not take the matter seriously, though he was disappointed at
having made a fruitless trip to San Jose. He did not believe that
Marie had done anything more than take a vacation from her mother's
sharp-tongued rule, and for that he could not blame her, after having
listened for fifteen minutes to the lady's monologue upon the subject
of selfish, inconsiderate, ungrateful daughters. Remembering Marie's
attitude toward Bud, he did not believe that she had gone hunting him.
Yet Marie had done that very thing. True, she had spent a sleepless
night fighting the impulse, and a harassed day trying to make up her
mind whether to write first, or whether to go and trust to the element
of surprise to help plead her cause with Bud; whether to take Lovin
Child with her, or leave him with her mother.
She definitely decided to write Bud a short note and ask him if he
remembered having had a wife and baby, once upon a time, and if he never
wished that he had them still. She wrote the letter, crying a
little over it along toward the last, as women will. But it sounded
cold-blooded and condemnatory. She wrote another, letting a little
of her real self into the lines. But that sounded sentimental and
moving-pictury, and she knew how Bud hated cheap sentimentalism.
So she tore them both up and put them in the little heating stove,
and lighted a match and set them burning, and watched them until they
withered down to gray ash, and then broke up the ashes and scattered
them amongst the cinders. Marie, you must know, had learned a good many
things, one of which was the unwisdom of whetting the curiosity of a
curious woman.
After that she proceeded to pack a suit case for herself and Lovin
Child, seizing the opportunity while her mother was visiting a friend
in Santa Clara. Once the packing was began, Marie worked with a feverish
intensity of purpose and an eagerness that was amazing, considering her
usual apathy toward everything in her life as she was living it.
Everything but Lovin Child. Him she loved and gloried in. He was like
Bud--so much like him that Marie could not have loved him so much if she
had managed to hate Bud as she tried sometimes to hate him. Lovin Child
was a husky youngster, and he already had the promise of being as tall
and straight-limbed and square-shouldered as his father. Deep in his
eyes there lurked always a twinkle, as though he knew a joke that would
make you laugh--if only he dared tell it; a quizzical, secretly
amused little twinkle, as exactly like Bud's as it was possible for
a two-year-old twinkle to be. To go with the twinkle, he had a quirky
little smile. And to better the smile, he had the jolliest little
chuckle that ever came through a pair of baby lips.