With his food Saterlee was not patient. He dispensed with mastication.
Neither was he patient of other people's matrimonial ventures. And, in
particular, that contemplated and threatened by his son and heir was
moving him across three hundred miles of inundated country as fast as a
train could carry him. His son had written:

"DEAREST DAD--I've found Dorothy again. She's at Carcasonne. They
thought her lungs were bad, but they aren't. We're going to be married a
week from to-day--next Friday--at nine A.M. This marriage is going to
take place, Daddy dear. You can't prevent it. I write this so's to be on
the square. I'm inviting you to the wedding. I'll be hurt if you don't
show up. What if Dorothy's mother _is_ an actress and has been divorced
twice? You've been a marrying man yourself, Dad. Dorothy is all darling
from head to foot. But I love you, too, Daddy, and if you can't see it
my way, why, God bless and keep you just the same."

JIM.

I can't deny that Marcus Antonius Saterlee was touched by his son's
epistle. But he was not moved out of reason.

"The girl's mother," he said to himself, "is a painted, divorced jade."
And he thought with pleasure of the faith, patience, and rectitude of
the three gentle companions whom he had successively married and buried.
"There was never any divorce in the Saterlee blood," he had prided
himself. "Man or woman, we stick by our choice till he or she" (he was
usually precise) "turns up his or her toes. Not till then do we think of
anybody else. But then we do, because it is not good to live alone,
especially in a small community in Southern California."