"Jeer at your old mother if you wish, Richard," his mother went on icily, "but let me tell you that Mr. Gordon is madly in love with Margaret and if you do not look out you will have a scandal on your hands."
"You are going a bit too far in your excitement, mother," Dicky said sternly. "You may not realize it, but you are insinuating that there might be a possible chance of Madge's returning the man's admiration."
"I am not insinuating anything," his mother returned, white-lipped with anger, "but I certainly think Margaret owes both you and me an explanation of the untruth she told us at the supper table the night you introduced Mr. Gordon to us."
I sprang to my feet with my cheeks afire.
"Mother Graham, I have listened to you with respect as long as I can," I exclaimed. "Whatever else you have to say to my husband about me you can say in my absence. If he at any time wishes an explanation of any action of mine he has only to ask me for it."
White with rage I dashed out of the room, up the stairs and into my own room, locking the door behind me. In a few minutes Dicky's step came swiftly up the stairs; his knock sounded on my door.
"Madge, let me in," he commanded, but the note of tenderness in his voice was the influence that hurried my fingers in the turning of the key.
As I opened the door he strode in past me, closed and locked the door again, and, turning, caught me in his arms.
"Don't you dare to cry!" he stormed, kissing my reddened eyelids. "Aren't you ever going to get used to mother's childish outbursts? You know she doesn't mean what she says in those tantrums of hers. She simply works herself up to a point where she's absolutely irresponsible, and she has to explode or burst. You wouldn't like to see a perfectly good mother-in-law strewn in fragment all over the room, simply because she had restrained her temper, would you?" he added, with the quick transition from hot anger to whimsical good nature that I always find so bewildering in him.
I struggled for composure. My mother-in-law's words had been too scathing, her insult too direct for me to look upon it as lightly as Dicky could, but the knowledge that he had come directly after me, and that he had no part in the resentment his mother showed, made it easy for me to control myself.