"God damn Bradley Collingham!" he cried, with his mouth full. "I'll do something to get even with him yet—if I have to go to the chair for it."
"Sit down, you great gump—talking like that!" Gussie pulled her brother by the coat till he sank back into his seat. "Momma, you should send him away from the table."
"That's a very wicked thing to say, my boy—" Josiah was beginning.
"Let him talk as he likes," the mother broke in, calmly. "Going to the chair can't be so terrible—if you have a reason."
She went on carving as if she had said nothing strange.
"Well, ma, I call that the limit," Jennie commented.
"Oh no, it isn't," the mother returned, with the new strength which seemed to have come to her within half an hour. "I'm ready to say a good deal more."
She looked adoringly toward Teddy, who after his outburst had returned sheepishly to his plate, while Pansy stood apart from them all, wise, yearning, and yet implacable, a little doggy Fate.
[CHAPTER V]
No difference of standard in the Collingham household was so obvious as that between Dauphin, the Irish setter, and Max, the police dog. The situation was specially hard on Dauphin. To have owned Collingham Lodge and its occupants during all his conscious life, and then one day to find himself obliged to share this dominion with a stranger had given him in his declining years a pessimistic point of view. It had made him proud, cold, withdrawn, like a crusty old aristocrat forced in among base company. To the best of his ability he ignored the police dog, though it was difficult not to be aware of the presence of a being too exuberant to appreciate disdain.