Marie Takes a Desperate Chance

Domestic wrecks may be a subject taboo in polite conversation, but Joe
De Barr was not excessively polite, and he had, moreover, a very likely
hope that Marie would yet choose to regard him with more favor than she
had shown in the past. He did not chance to see her at once, but as soon
as his work would permit he made it a point to meet her. He went about
it with beautiful directness. He made bold to call her up on "long
distance" from San Francisco, told her that he would be in San Jose that
night, and invited her to a show.

Marie accepted without enthusiasm--and her listlessness was not lost
over forty miles of telephone wire. Enough of it seeped to Joe's ears
to make him twist his mustache quite furiously when he came out of the
telephone booth. If she was still stuck on that fellow Bud, and couldn't
see anybody else, it was high time she was told a few things about him.
It was queer how a nice girl like Marie would hang on to some cheap
guy like Bud Moore. Regular fellows didn't stand any show--unless
they played what cards happened to fall their way. Joe, warned by her
indifference, set himself very seriously to the problem of playing his
cards to the best advantage.

He went into a flower store--disdaining the banked loveliness upon the
corners--and bought Marie a dozen great, heavy-headed chrysanthemums,
whose color he could not name to save his life, so called them pink and
let it go at that. They were not pink, and they were not sweet--Joe held
the bunch well away from his protesting olfactory nerves which were not
educated to tantalizing odors--but they were more expensive than roses,
and he knew that women raved over them. He expected Marie to rave over
them, whether she liked them or not.