His shrewd eye had marked a collapse on the part of James. He felt reasonably assured that the young man was bluffing; he knew that this "downy cove" wanted a wife with more than stockings, no matter how pretty her bare feet might be. Fortified by this conclusion, he, so to speak, fixed bayonets and charged. Unfortunately, he did not take Susan’s character into account, which a husband so acute should have done. He was well aware that his wife, with all her shining qualities, was obstinate and emotional. More, he had never regarded her as a mother, although that significant name crossed his lips a hundred times each day. Susan was his wife. When he charged, head down, seeing "red," intent only upon "downing" the clever knave and the foolish virgin, Susan interposed, metaphorically, her soft body. "Joe, you ain’t serious? You ain’t turning our child out of our house at midnight?" We must admit that Quinney was not serious, but for the moment he was in no condition to think soberly. He replied fiercely: "I’m turning out a—adder!" Susan faced him. He had lost his head; she lost hers. "If you do this——" she gasped. "Go on!" "If you do this unnatural, cruel, wicked——" "That’s right. Hit a man when he’s down!" "Down!" she retorted, as fiercely as he; "it’s up you are, Joe Quinney, tens o’ thousands o’ feet above all common sense and common decency. It is things you care for—things—things—things! And our Posy—my Posy, bless her!—is right to prefer persons to the graven images, the false gods, which you’ve set up and worshipped—yes, worshipped! There’s only one person in all the world you care for, and that’s yourself—yourself!" She flung herself into a chair in a paroxysm of grief and distress, covering her face with the hands which had worked so faithfully for a husband changed beyond recognition. Posy flew to her. "Darling mother!" Quinney pushed the girl aside. "All your fault, you baggage! Susan! Susan!" Susan sobbed inarticulately. Quinney shook her, speaking loudly, but not unkindly, confounded in his turn by an indictment which he hardly understood. "Stop it, old dear, stop it! I care about you. Susie—I do, indeed! Worked for you, I have, made a perfect lady of yer! Couldn’t get along without you, no how! And you know it! Darby and Joan—what? Oh, bung it! Gawd bless me soul! you’ll melt away like, if you ain’t careful. Sue, s’elp me, you come first." She lifted her head with disconcerting suddenness. "Do I? Sure?" He seized her hand, and pressed it. "Why, of course. Nice old cup of tea, you are, to doubt that!" "You’d miss me if I went?" The sharp interrogation ought to have given him pause. Perhaps he had always underrated Susan’s subtlety. The most foolish mothers can be subtle as the serpent when the happiness of their children is at stake. "Miss you? Haven’t I said time and again that I hoped as I’d be taken first?" She sat up alert, strangely composed after this tempest of emotion.