“If any woman gits in my way when I’m doin’ my bounden duty by myself,” she retorted, “she gits what’s comin’ to her. Says I to that snifflin’ school-marm, ‘There’s no man what’s draggin’ at a woman’s gown-tail unless he gits encouragement.’ And I says to Miss Queen Sheby of the Willards, ‘You can take that to yourself, you that’s tryin’ to shet me up. King Bradish and Squire Phin Look wouldn’t both be----” “Esther Dunham,” he shouted, “not another word. Not one word!” It was the awful anger of a patient man thoroughly aroused that fronted her. “I have a right to speak my own mind, and I pretty gen’rally do it,” she muttered, but she did not venture to say any more. He slowly sank back into his armchair, still glaring at her. “Oh, the devilish weapon that a woman feels privileged to use,” he cried. After a time he went on sternly: “Esther, I knew you at school, and I’ve watched you more or less since. You were kind of a cute little girl, with your way of spitting out just what you thought about folks and things. But we’d laugh at kittens when we’d cuff an old cat’s ears for doing the same thing. You’ve nagged and browbeaten your husband all your life together, and you know it!” “Gimme them dockyments,” she rasped, popping up with a snap like a carpenter’s rule. The lawyer put his broad hand on them. “’Caje Dunham was the kind of man that you could have driven with a cotton thread of love and teamed him anywhere. But you’ve used goad sticks, and hot pitch and a twist bit, and it isn’t any wonder you’ve made him balky.” “So you’re stickin’ up for that missable critter right before my face and eyes,” she cried. “I might ’a’ knowed better than to come here and expect a dried-up old bach to admit anything about the rights of a woman. You give me them papers, Squire Phin Look! I know where I can buy law, even if it isn’t for sale in this shop.” He calmly held the papers away from her clutching fingers. “How much have you and ’Caje put away between you?” he inquired. And when she did not reply, puckering her eyes and resenting his intrusive question, he suggested, more gently, “In case of alimony, you know!” “If that’s what you’re askin’ for, I don’t know as there’s any hurt in tellin’ you we’ve got risin’ ’leven thousand, put where it’s earnin’ int’rest and twenty-five hundred out on first mo’gidges.” “And not a chick nor a child to leave it to,” he murmured, looking at her with sudden sympathy in his eyes. “It’s too bad, Esther, that your little ’Cilia was called away to her treasures in Heaven before she could enjoy some of the treasures you heaped up on earth for her--you two, poor, tug-a-lugging old critters, you!” She sat down suddenly, and her work-stained, knotted hands trembled as she folded them on her lap.