If Joe should
happen to meet Marie, he would manage somehow to let her know
that Bud was going to the dogs--on the toboggan--down and
out--whatever it suited Joe to declare him. It made Bud sore
now to think of Joe standing so smug and so well dressed and so
immaculate beside the bar, smiling and twisting the ends of his
little brown mustache while he watched Bud make such a consummate
fool of himself. At the time, though, Bud had taken a perverse
delight in making himself appear more soddenly drunken, more
boisterous and reckless than he really was.
Oh, well, what was the odds? Marie couldn't think any worse of
him than she already thought. And whatever she thought, their
trails had parted, and they would never cross again--not if
Bud could help it. Probably Marie would say amen to that. He
would like to know how she was getting along--and the baby,
too. Though the baby had never seemed quite real to Bud, or as if
it were a permanent member of the household. It was a leather-
lunged, red-faced, squirming little mite, and in his heart of
hearts Bud had not felt as though it belonged to him at all. He
had never rocked it, for instance, or carried it in his arms. He
had been afraid he might drop it, or squeeze it too hard, or
break it somehow with his man's strength.
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