Then we heard her say, ''Look he-ere, Mister Bent, why are you
such an aw-ful liar?" I nearly exploded while The Dancing Master
denied the charge. It seems that he never told her he was a married
man.'
'I said he wouldn't.'
'And she had taken this to heart, on personal grounds, I suppose.
She drawled along for five minutes, reproaching him with his
perfidy, and grew quite motherly. ''Now you've got a nice little
wife of your own you have," she said. ''She's ten times too good for
a fat old man like you, and, look he-ere, you never told me a word
about her, and I've been thinkin' about it a good deal, and I think
you're a liar." Wasn't that delicious? The Dancing Master
maundered and raved till the Hawley Boy suggested that he should
burst in and beat him. His voice runs up into an impassioned
squeak when he is afraid. The Dowd must be an extraordinary
woman. She explained that had he been a bachelor she might not
have objected to his devotion; but since he was a married man and
the father of a very nice baby, she considered him a hypocrite, and
this she repeated twice. She wound up her drawl with: ''An' I'm
tellin' you this because your wife is angry with me, an' I hate
quarrellin' with any other woman, an' I like your wife. You know
how you have behaved for the last six weeks. You shouldn't have
done it, indeed you shouldn't.
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