“Bravo, Margaret Hamilton,” cried Lenora, “I’m with you now, if I never was before.  It serves her right, for Willie told the truth.  I was sitting by and saw it all.  Keep her in there an hour, will you?  It will pay her for the many times she has shut me up for nothing.”

Mrs. Hamilton stamped and pushed against the door, while Lenora danced and sang at the top of her voice: 

    “My dear precious mother got wrathy one day
      And seized little Will by the hair;
    But when in the closet she’d stow him away,
      She herself was pushed headlong in there.”

At length the bolt, yielding to the continued pressure of Mrs. Hamilton’s body, broke, and out came the termagant, foaming with rage.  She dared not molest Margaret, of whose physical powers she had just received such mortifying proof, so she aimed a box at the ears of Lenora.  But the lithe little thing dodged it, and with one bound cleared the table which sat in the center of the room, landing safely on the other side; and then, shaking her short, black curls at her mother, she said, “You didn’t come it, that time, my darling.”

Mr. Hamilton, who chanced to be absent for a few days, was, on his return, regaled with an exaggerated account of the proceeding, his wife ending her discourse by saying:  “If you don’t do something with your upstart daughter I’ll leave the house; yes, I will.”

Mr. Hamilton was cowardly.  He was afraid of his wife, and he was afraid of Mag.  So he tried to compromise the matter by promising the one that he surely would see to it, and by asking the other if she were not ashamed.  But old Polly didn’t let the matter pass so easily.  She was greatly shocked at having “such shameful carryin’s on in a decent man’s house.”

“’Clare for’t,” said she, “I’ll give marster a piece of Polly Pepper’s mind the fust time I get a lick at him.”

In the course of a few days Mr. Hamilton had occasion to go for something into Aunt Polly’s dominions.  The old lady was ready for him.  “Mr. Hampleton,” said she, “I’ve been waitin’ to see you this long spell.”

“To see me, Polly?” said he; “what do you want?”

“What I wants is this,” answered Polly, dropping into a chair.  “I want to know what this house is a comin’ to, with such bedivilment in it as there’s been since madam came here with that little black-headed, ugly-favored, ill-begotten, Satan-possessed, shoulder-unj’inted young one of her’n.  It’s been nothin’ but a rowdadow the whole time, and you hain’t grit enough to stop it.  Madam boxes Willie, and undertakes to shet him up for a lie he never told; Miss Margaret interferes jest as she or’to, takes Willie away, and shets up madam; while that ill-marnered Lenora jumps and screeches loud enough to wake the dead.  Madam busts the door down, and pitches into the varmint, who jumps spang over a four-foot table, which Lord knows I never could have done in my spryest days.”