“She’s nice but-- Hang it, I won’t be _made_ to do things! I’m not married to her. No, nor by golly going to be! “Oh, rats, I suppose I better go see her.” II Thursday, the to-morrow of Tanis’s note, was full of emotional crises. At the Roughnecks’ Table at the club, Verg Gunch talked of the Good Citizens’ League and (it seemed to Babbitt) deliberately left him out of the invitations to join. Old Mat Penniman, the general utility man at Babbitt’s office, had Troubles, and came in to groan about them: his oldest boy was “no good,” his wife was sick, and he had quarreled with his brother-in-law. Conrad Lyte also had Troubles, and since Lyte was one of his best clients, Babbitt had to listen to them. Mr. Lyte, it appeared, was suffering from a peculiarly interesting neuralgia, and the garage had overcharged him. When Babbitt came home, everybody had Troubles: his wife was simultaneously thinking about discharging the impudent new maid, and worried lest the maid leave; and Tinka desired to denounce her teacher. “Oh, quit fussing!” Babbitt fussed. “You never hear me whining about my Troubles, and yet if you had to run a real-estate office-- Why, to-day I found Miss Bannigan was two days behind with her accounts, and I pinched my finger in my desk, and Lyte was in and just as unreasonable as ever.” He was so vexed that after dinner, when it was time for a tactful escape to Tanis, he merely grumped to his wife, “Got to go out. Be back by eleven, should think.” “Oh! You’re going out again?” “Again! What do you mean ‘again’! Haven’t hardly been out of the house for a week!” “Are you--are you going to the Elks?” “Nope. Got to see some people.” Though this time he heard his own voice and knew that it was curt, though she was looking at him with wide-eyed reproach, he stumped into the hall, jerked on his ulster and fur-lined gloves, and went out to start the car. He was relieved to find Tanis cheerful, unreproachful, and brilliant in a frock of brown net over gold tissue. “You poor man, having to come out on a night like this! It’s terribly cold. Don’t you think a small highball would be nice?” “Now, by golly, there’s a woman with savvy! I think we could more or less stand a highball if it wasn’t too long a one--not over a foot tall!” He kissed her with careless heartiness, he forgot the compulsion of her demands, he stretched in a large chair and felt that he had beautifully come home. He was suddenly loquacious; he told her what a noble and misunderstood man he was, and how superior to Pete, Fulton Bemis, and the other men of their acquaintance; and she, bending forward, chin in charming hand, brightly agreed. But when he forced himself to ask, “Well, honey, how’s things with _you_,” she took his duty-question seriously, and he discovered that she too had Troubles: