Benito was both tearful and enraged. His mother caught his hand and, holding it in a tense grip, bent her face down to his and said with set emphasis: “Do you want to stay all afternoon in the kitchen cupboard?” He struggled to be free, reiterating: “No, I don’t, and I ain’t goin’ to. I think you’re real mean to me; I ain’t goin’ to go nowhere with you.” “You mean, ungrateful little boy,” said his parent, furiously, shaking the hand she held. “Don’t talk back to me. You’ll go with me this afternoon and see that balloon if I have to drag you all the way. Yes, you will.” “I won’t,” roared Benito, now enraged past all control; and in his frenzy to escape he kicked at his mother’s ankles through her intervening skirts. This was too much for Mrs. Garcia’s feelings as a mother. She took her free hand and boxed Benito smartly on the ear. Then for a moment there was war. Benito kicked, roaring lustily, while his mother cuffed. The din of combat was loud on the balcony, and several of the geranium pots were knocked over. It remained for Barron to descend from the railing and drag the boy away from his wrathful parent. “Here, stop kicking your mother,” he said peremptorily; “that won’t do at all.” “Then make her stop slapping me,” howled Benito. “Ain’t I got a right to kick back? I guess you’d kick all right if you was slapped that way.” “All right,” said his mother from the doorway, “next time you come to me, Benito Garcia, to be taken to the circus or the fair, you’ll find out that you’ve barked up the wrong tree.” “I don’t care,” responded Benito defiantly; “grandma or Uncle Gam will.” Five minutes after her irate withdrawal she reappeared, calm and smiling, the memory of her recent combat showing only in her heightened color, and announced that lunch was ready. At lunch the stranger was introduced to Mariposa, and she learned that he was Isaac Pierpont, a singing teacher living in the house. CHAPTER XII DRIFT AND CROSSCUT “A living dog is better than a dead lion.” --ECCLESIASTES. On the evening of the day when Jake Shackleton went to his account Essex had walked slowly to Bertrand’s _rôtisserie_, his head drooped, the evening paper in his hand. Two hours before the cries of the newsboys announcing the sudden demise of his chief had struck on his ear, for the first moment freezing him into motionless amazement. Standing under a lamp, he had read the short report, then hurried down to the office of _The Trumpet_. There in the turmoil and hubbub which marks the first portentous movement of the great daily making ready to go to press, he had heard fuller details. The office was in an uproar, shaken to its foundation by the startling news, every man and woman ready with a speculation or a rumor as to the ultimate fate of _The Trumpet_, on which their own little fates hung.