You'll kill me before you have done with me!"
The ex-pilot shifted on his chair.
"You're not fit to have a wife," continued Mrs. Pepper, "aggravating
them and upsetting them! Any other woman would have left you long ago!"
"We've only been married three months," Pepper reminded her.
"Don't talk to me!" said his wife; "it seems more like a lifetime!"
"It seems a long time to ME" said the ex-pilot, plucking up a little
courage.
"That's right!" said his wife, striding over to where he sat. "Say
you're tired of me; say you wish you hadn't married me! You coward! Ah!
if my poor first husband was only alive and sitting in that chair now
instead of you, how happy I would be!"
"If he likes to come and take it he's welcome!" said Pepper; "it's my
chair, and it was my father's before me, but there's no man living I
would sooner give it to than your first. Ah! he knew what he was about
when the Dolphin went down, he did. I don't blame him, though."
"What do you mean?" demanded his wife.
"It's my belief that he didn't go down with her," said Pepper, crossing
over to the staircase and standing with his hand on the door.
"Didn't go down with her?" repeated his wife scornfully. "What became of
him, then? Where's he been this thirty years?"
"In hiding!" said Pepper spitefully, and passed hastily upstairs.
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