"I was so shocked you might have knocked me over with a feather, but I managed to speak to him--I don't know how I ever did it!--and I said: 'You don't mean Flora, sir--_you_ can't treat Flora that way!' And if you could have seen the way he flew to pieces! 'Why can't I?' he yelled at me. 'Do you think I haven't done it before?' Exactly what he said and I could hardly believe my ears; and then"--here she began to wabble and the handkerchief came up--"then he--he called me a wo-woman!" And, by Jove, she was off the road! But it seemed to give the judge new interest in life! He just needed some jolly thing, you know; and now he flared up sudden and went up in the air like a freshly touched-off what's-its-name: "A woman?" His cheeks blew out like little red balloons. "Well, dammit, madam, what are you--_aren't_ you a woman?"--hands on hips he just howled it at her--"what do you _think_ you are?" For an instant she quailed before him like the stricken what-you-call-it--but _only_ for an instant! Then her long neck coiled back and her eyes glittered beady and snake-like; I heard a sort of rattle in her throat, and then, of course, I knew she was going to strike--and she did! "Very good, Judge!" She sniffed it. "Still it's my duty to tell you--or any one that asks me, for that matter--exactly what Mr. Jack said!" She moistened her lips with the end of a red tongue, and clucked in a sad, pitying sort of way. "Your son looked straight at me through the door-crack and laughed in the most contemptuous way, and he said: 'You just leave my Flora to me, woman! This time you're talking of something you know nothing about and never did know--why, I've pressed Flora a thousand times!'--yes, sir, just what he said!"--she whirled on Wilkes--"you heard him say it, too!" The butler's sullen eye-droop admitted it. "Huh!" And she tossed her head back with a nasty smile. By Jove, she had got the judge full and square--you could see it as he stood there looking down, his face jolly gray and drawn and his under-lip kind of dragging through his teeth. He was a gamey old boy, but he had had a devilish hard knock where he lived you know--Jack! "George!"--just a deep breath, you know--then he faced me. "You will excuse me, Lightnut? I must see to this." And he walked out, followed by Wilkes. Somehow, dash it, it just bowled me over to see his gray hairs humbled in this way to the what-you-call-it--he had such a devilish few of 'em left, too, you know! So, before I knew it, I had walked right up to the old mountain cat and took a hand myself. "I say, you know!" I said, screwing my monocle down on her. "Too devilish bad you've got yourself in such a pickle--" "_Me_ in a pickle?" she snorted. "Huh!"--and her ropy neck went up again, but I struck first: