When he thought of
Marie he did not necessarily think of the baby, though sometimes
he did, wondering vaguely how much it had grown, and if it still
hollered for its bottle, all hours of the day and night.
Coming back to Marie and Joe--it was not at all certain that
they would meet; or that Joe would mention him, even if they did.
A wrecked home is always a touchy subject, so touchy that Joe had
never intimated in his few remarks to Bud that there had ever
been a Marie, and Bud, drunk as he had been, was still not too
drunk to held back the question that clamored to be spoken.
Whether he admitted it to himself or not, the sober Bud Moore
who lay on his bunk nursing a headache and a grouch against the
world was ashamed of the drunken Bud Moore who had paraded his
drunkenness before the man who knew Marie. He did not want Marie
to hear what Joe might tell There was no use, he told himself
miserably, in making Marie despise him as well as hate him. There
was a difference. She might think him a brute, and she might
accuse him of failing to be a kind and loving husband; but she
could not, unless Joe told of his spree, say that she had ever
heard of his carousing around. That it would be his own fault if
she did hear, served only to embitter his mood.
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