“‘_Quiet!_’” Mrs. Coy exclaimed. And then as a series of shocks overhead noticeably jarred the ceiling, she started. “Good heavens! They’re upstairs—they’ll have the roof on us!” She hurried into the hall, but the outlaws were already descending. Just ahead of them plunged Laurence, fleeing like some rabid thing. Behind him, in the ruck of boys, Daisy Mears seemed to reach for him at the full length of her extended arms; and so the rout went on and out through the open front doors to the yard, where still was heard above all other cries, “_Hay_, there, Mister! _I’ll_ show you!” Mrs. Coy returned helplessly to the guests of sweeter behaviour, and did what she could to amuse them, but presently she was drawn to a window by language without. It was the voice of her son in frenzy. He stood on the lawn, swinging a rake about him circularly. “Let her try it!” he said. “Let her try it just once more, an’ _I’ll_ show her!” For audience, out of reach of the rake, he had Daisy Mears and all his male guests save the two or three spiritless well-mannered at feeble play in the living-room; and this entire audience, including Miss Mears, replied in chanting chorus: “Daisy Mears an’ Laurunce Coy! She’s your _girl_!” Such people are hard to convince. Laurence swung the rake, repeating: “Just let her try it; that’s all I ast! Just let her try to come near me again!” “_Laurence!_” said his mother from the window. He looked up, and there was the sincerest bitterness in his tone as he said: “Well, I stood _enough_ around here this afternoon!” “Put down the rake,” she said. “The idea of shaking a rake at a little girl!” The idea she mentioned seemed reasonable to Laurence, in his present state of mind, and in view of what he had endured. “I bet _you’d_ shake it at her,” he said, “if she’d been doin’ to you what she’s been doin’ to me!” Now, from Mrs. Coy’s standpoint, that was nothing short of grotesque; yet actually there was something in what he said. Mrs. Coy was in love with Mr. Coy; and if another man—one whom she disliked and thought homely and unattractive—had bumped into her at a party, upsetting her frequently, sitting on her, pushing her over repeatedly as she attempted to rise, then embracing her and claiming her as his own, and following her about, and pursuing her even when she fled, insisting upon his claim to her and upon embracing her again and again, causing Mr. Coy to criticize her with outspoken superiority—and if all this had taken place with the taunting connivance of absolutely every one of the best people she knew—why, under such parallel circumstances, Mrs. Coy might or might not have armed herself with a rake, but this would have depended, probably, on whether or not there was a rake handy, and supposing there was, upon whether or not she became too hysterical to use it.