She was an irritating person.  I found it not a little difficult to keep my temper with her.  It’s easier to fight dragons than to temporize with them and appeal to their better nature.  I appealed and appealed.  She watched me with the same air of interested detachment that one gives to a squirrel revolving in a cage.  I could feel that she was flattered; her sense of power was agreeably tickled; my earnestness and despair enhanced the zest of her reiterated refusals.  I was a very nice young man, but her son was going to marry Bertha McNutt or marry nobody!

Then I tried to draw a lurid picture of his revolt from her apron-strings.

“Oh, Harry’s a good boy,” she said.  “You can’t make me believe that two days has altered his whole character.  I’ll answer for his doing what I want.”

I felt a precisely similar conviction, and my heart sank into my shoes.

At this moment there was a tap at the door, and another old lady bounced in.  She was stout, jolly-looking and effusive.  The greetings between the pair were warm, and they were evidently old friends.  But underneath the new-comer’s gush and noise I was dimly conscious of a sort of gay hostility.  She was exultant and frightened, both at once, and her eyes were sparkling.

“Well, what do you think?” she cried out, explosively.

Mrs. Jones’ lips tightened.  There was a mean streak in that old woman.  I could see she was feeling for her little hatchet, and was getting out her little gun.

“Bertha!” exploded the old lady.  “Bertha—­”

(Mysterious mental processes at once informed me that this was none other than Bertha’s mother.)

Mrs. Jones was coolly taking aim.  I was reminded of that old military dictum:  “Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes!”

“Bertha,” vociferated the old lady fiercely—­“Bertha has been secretly married to Mr. Stuffenhammer for the last three months!”

Another series of kinematographic mental processes informed me that Mr. Stuffenhammer was an immense catch.

“Twenty thousand dollars a year, and her own carriage,” continued Mrs. McNutt gloatingly.  “You could have knocked me down with a feather.  Bertha is such a considerate child; she insisted on marrying secretly so that she could tone it down by degrees to poor Harry; though there was no engagement or anything like that, she could not help feeling of course that she owed it to the dear boy to gradually”

Mrs. Jones never turned a hair or moved a muscle.

“You needn’t pity Harry,” she said.  “I’ve just got the good news that he’s engaged to one of the sweetest and richest girls in Morristown.”

I jumped for my hat and ran.

V