"Don't be a lot of geese, you girls! Of course, you're all cut up at seeing me so unexpectedly, but I'm not going to let you be foolish about it. It's all in a lifetime anyway: and I really wish you wouldn't say things which to-morrow or the day after you'll be sorry for. I understand as perfectly as though you ran on all night just how you feel; you're horrified, ashamed, outraged--all those things. Bless me, you wouldn't be respectable women if you were not! If you fell on my neck and kissed me I should resent it. Really I should! You would be a disgrace to civilization if my showing up here on Christmas morning didn't give you nausea. I've been divorced twice, and anybody with any sort of nice feeling about life would make a rumpus about it. I'm rather annoyed about it myself; so that's all perfectly regular. You have said just what you ought to have said and you feel just as you should feel. Now that's understood, why not talk of something else and be comfortable?" The three men had discreetly betaken themselves across the hall and the children of Amzi II were alone. "You forget, Lois, that there are other persons besides ourselves to consider. If it were just Amzi and us--" persisted Mrs. Waterman, shifting her ground before this shameless confession. "There's the whole world, when you come to that," said Lois. "What's in your mind, Jo,--Tom and Phil? Well, there's nothing novel in that; I thought about them a good deal before I came back. You may scratch Tom off the list; he's clear out of it. But as for Phil--" "As for Phil, you have no right--" "I haven't the slightest claim on Phil, of course; I never said I had, and I don't pretend to have. Please don't assume, Fanny, that I've lost all the wits I ever had! I'll say to you frankly that I feel that my coming may be troublesome to Phil; and yet the fact that I am here" (she smiled and threw out her arms, allowing them to fall to emphasize the futility of words)--"the fact that I am here shows that I have considered that and decided to take the risk of coming, in spite of Phil." "Lois, you don't seem to have the slightest comprehension of the case--not the slightest," urged Mrs. Waterman, resenting the smile with which her sister had ended. "You brutally abandoned Phil; and now you come back to spoil her life. I didn't suppose there was a woman in the world so callous, so utterly without shame, so blindly selfish--" Amzi paused in his stride across the room and planted himself belligerently before his oldest sister. His eyes bulged angrily. "Josie, you can't talk like that to Lois; not in this house! I tell you, Lois is all right. If you don't like her, you can let her alone. I'm not going to have you talk to her like this--not here. Now I want you to understand, you, Josie; you, Kate; you, Fanny" (he indicated each in turn with his pudgy forefinger) "I wouldn't let her badger you, and I'm not going to let you jump on her."