Sinclair Lewis: Main Street

38. CHAPTER XXXVIII (continued)

"You're---- It's awfully----"

"'Nother thing. I'm going to be frank. I haven't always been absolutely, uh, absolutely, proper. I've always loved you more than anything else in the world, you and the kid. But sometimes when you were chilly to me I'd get lonely and sore, and pike out and---- Never intended----"

She rescued him with a pitying, "It's all right. Let's forget it."

"But before we were married you said if your husband ever did anything wrong, you'd want him to tell you."

"Did I? I can't remember. And I can't seem to think. Oh, my dear, I do know how generously you're trying to make me happy. The only thing is---- I can't think. I don't know what I think."

"Then listen! Don't think! Here's what I want you to do! Get a two-weeks leave from your office. Weather's beginning to get chilly here. Let's run down to Charleston and Savannah and maybe Florida.

"A second honeymoon?" indecisively.

"No. Don't even call it that. Call it a second wooing. I won't ask anything. I just want the chance to chase around with you. I guess I never appreciated how lucky I was to have a girl with imagination and lively feet to play with. So---- Could you maybe run away and see the South with me? If you wanted to, you could just--you could just pretend you were my sister and---- I'll get an extra nurse for Hugh! I'll get the best dog-gone nurse in Washington!"