“Finally, after she got everything dusted she looked over straight at me and says, ‘Are you goin’ to read that paper all night?’ I told her I was if I wanted to, that it was none of her business how long I read it; there was a part of it that I’d like to give her to read if she wanted to; it was the cookery department, and had a recipe for frying steak. Of course, there wa’n’t no such thing in the paper, and I just made it up and said it to be sassy, and I knew I shouldn’t have been throwin’ it up to her, but I was so mad I really didn’t think how ‘twould sound. Then she said she didn’t want any advice from me or the paper either, about cookin’, and she wanted me to understand that the cookin’ was none of my business and she’d tend to that herself in her own way, and if ever I interfered again she’d leave me and take the kid with her. She said she learned cookin’ long before she ever knew me. Then I said I thought she could make money by startin’ a cookin’ school; all them rich folks on Prairie Avenue would come over to get her to learn them how to fry steak. She said she guessed she knew more ‘bout fryin’ steak than I did, and when I boarded at the restaurant I was mighty glad to get steak fried that way, and I only grumbled about it now because I was so mean and didn’t know how to treat a woman, and a man like me never had no right to have a decent wife. Then I said I wished I hadn’t; I’d be a mighty sight better off by myself than livin’ with her and havin’ her spoil everything that came in the house, and I wished I was back boardin’ in the restaurant where she found me. She said I didn’t wish it half so much as she did, that she got along a good deal better when she was waitin’ on the table than she had since she married me; then she had a chance to get out once in a while and see someone and have a good time, but now she stayed to home from one year’s end to another lookin’ after me and my brat. I told her I guessed the brat was just as much hers as it was mine, and I didn’t think that was any way to speak about the boy. Of course I really knew that she didn’t say it because she had anything against him, but just because she was mad at me. She always liked him, and I can’t make any complaint of the way she treated him, and I want him to know it when we’re both dead, and I don’t want him to get any idea that she wa’n’t perfectly square. I kind of want you to fix it, if you can, so ‘twon’t look to him as if either of us was to blame, but I guess that won’t be an easy thing to do.