"I will swear as I like, and when I like!" said the Judge, after a pause of an instant. But he did not swear again immediately, and not at all again at his sister, during the whole interview, it was noticeable. Brutality is not best met by brutality; but it is a mistake to suppose that it is best met by abject submission. What it needs, as its master and corrective, is _dignified firmness_. "So this is the way, is it," the Judge went on. "The moment my back is turned, my house is full of low characters, and quarrelling and fighting become the order of the day." "When did all this occur?" asked Aunt Martha, innocently. "The very evening I left!" thundered the Judge. "And how have you found it all out, so soon?" queried his sister, looking him very calmly in the eyes. It may be a libel, for which an action would lie, to say that Judge Owen blushed at this home-thrust. He certainly reddened, but that may have been with anger--not shame. "How do I know it? What business is that of yours, woman? It is enough to say that I _do_ know it, and that I will break all that sort of thing up, or I will break half a dozen heads!" This was a favorite simile of the Judge's, because it brought in the word "break" twice, in such an effective manner. "Well, Miss Emily Owen, what have you to say to all this?" It may be libel, again, to say that the Judge was sheering off his vessel from a battery that worried him, to engage one that seemed comparatively helpless; but really the whole thing bore that appearance. "I, father? I have nothing to say," returned the daughter, "and for that reason I have not said anything." "You do not deny, then," thundered the Judge, his voice rising higher because he had a younger, lower-voiced and less formidable antagonist, "that on the very night I went away there was low company in this house, and that--" Perhaps Emily Owen had never presumed to interrupt her father half a dozen times during her life, but we have before seen that she _could_ do so, even wickedly, when fully aroused, and the temptation to do so in the present instance was overpowering. Besides, she had just caught a lesson from her aunt, in the "_womanly_ art of self-defence," the muscular development for which lies in the tongue. "Do you call Colonel Bancker low company, father?" "Colonel Bancker? No, girl! Colonel Bancker is a gentleman and a soldier," replied the Judge. "I am speaking of that low, contemptible scoundrel, Wallace." "And _he_ has been in the habit of coming here with your consent, papa," answered the daughter, "and so I do not know how we were to blame for receiving the visits of people when you were gone, whom you were in the habit of receiving when you were at home."