He gulped and grew hot. "By Jupiter! I'll have to tell them what I
think of them up there, and please the pigs!"
Then he remembered the pleadings of his wife. She had implored him to
keep a tight hold of himself; and in fairness to her he must exercise
discretion. She and he were one. With extraordinary tenderness he
mentally framed the words that by custom he employed when speaking of
her. "She is the wife of my boosum."
For a little while he calmed himself by thinking only of her. Then,
tossing and turning and perspiring again, he began to think of his
whole life, seeing it as a pageant full of wonder and pathos. Holy
Jupiter! how hard it had been at its opening! Everything against
him--just a lout among the woodside louts, an orphan baited and
lathered by a boozy stepfather, a tortured animal that ran into the
thickets for safety, a thing with scarce a value or promise inside it
except the little flame of courage that blows could not extinguish!
And yet out of this raw material he had built up the potent, complex,
highly-dowered organism known to the world as Mr. Dale of Rodchurch.
There was the pride and glory--from such a start to have reached so
magnificent a position. But he could not have done it--not all of
it--without Mavis.
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