"I'll thank you to call me Mrs. Spinney, if you please, or if you don't please. Mrs. Spinney is the name I go by when I'm spoken to by them that knows their manners. If Billy Boynton thinks he can collect blood out of a stone he's welcome to try, but I should think he was too long headed to waste his time." "I gave him my I. O. U.," Collier Pratt said wearily. "If you don't mind, Hitty,--I really must be excused from your inexcusable surname--I am going to drink a cup of coffee before we continue this interesting discussion--_café noir_, our late unfortunate accident depriving me of _café au lait_ as usual. Sheila, get the cups." "You don't mean to say that you feed that peaked child with full strength coffee, do you? It'll stunt her growth; ain't you got the sense to know that?" "I don't like _big_ women," Collier Pratt said. "She's very fond of coffee." "Well! I've come to get her and take her away where you won't be in a position to stunt her growth, whatever your ideas on the subject is." Collier Pratt seated himself at the deal table that Sheila had set with the coffee-cups and a big loaf of French bread, and began slowly consuming a bowl of inky fluid, strong of chicory, into which from time to time he dipped a portion of the loaf. Sheila imitated his processes with less daintiness and precision, since she was shaken with excitement at Hitty's appearance. "I should spread a newspaper down if I was you," Hitty said, "before I et my vittles off a table that way. If a table ain't scrubbed as often as twice a day it ain't fit to be et off." "I know your breed," Collier Pratt said. "You'd be capable of taking your breakfast off _The Evening Telegram_ if no more appropriately colored sheet were at hand. Tell me, did Miss Martin send you here this morning, or was the inspiration to come entirely your own?" "Nobody had to send me. Wild horses wouldn't have kept me away from here." "Nor drag you away from here, I suppose, until your gruesome visit is accomplished. What makes you think that I would give up Sheila to you?" "I don't _think_ you would. I know you're a-goin' to." "Indeed." "We want the child. You don't want her, and you can't pretend to me that you do. Even if you did want her you can't take care of her in no way that's decent." "There's a great deal in what you say, Hitty." "What you're going to do is to sign a paper giving up your claim to her, and then Nancy can adopt her when she sees fitting to do so." "What would you suggest my doing about the child's mother? She has a mother living, you know." "Well, I didn't know," Hitty said, "but now I do know I guess I ain't going to have so much trouble as I thought I was. You're just a plain low-down yellow cur that any likely man I know would come down here and lick the lights out of." "Well, don't send any more of them, Hitty," Collier Pratt protested. "My work won't stand it."