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 bad 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.
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