With ostentatious deliberation Mrs. Bays folded her knitting and placed it on the floor beside her; took off her spectacles, put them in the case, and put the case in her pocket. Rita knew her mother was clearing the decks for action and that Justice was coldly arranging to have its own. So great was the girl's love and fear for this hard woman that she trembled as if in peril.
"Now, Margarita Fisher Bays," the Chief Justice began, glaring at the trembling girl. When on the bench she addressed her daughter by her full name in long-drawn syllables, and Rita's full name upon her mother's lips meant trouble. But at the moment Mrs. Bays began her address from the bench Billy Little came around the corner of the house and stopped in front of the porch.
Tom said, "Hello, Billy Little," Mr. Bays said, "Howdy," and Mrs. Bays said majestically: "Good evening, Mr. Little. You have come just in time to see the ungratefullest creature the world can produce—a disobedient daughter."
"I can't believe that you have one," smiled Billy.
Rita's eyes flashed a look of gratitude upon her friend. Dic might not be able to understand the language of those eyes, but Billy knew their vocabulary from the smallest to the greatest word.
"I wouldn't believe it either," said Mrs. Bays, "if I had not just heard her say it with my own ears."
"Did she say it with your own ears?" interrupted Tom.
"Now, Tom, please don't interrupt, my son," said Mrs. Bays. "She said to her own mother, Mr. Little, 'I won't;' said it to her own mother who has toiled and suffered and endured for her sake all her life long; to her own mother who has nursed her and watched over her and tried to do her duty according to the poor light that God has vouchsafed—and—and I've been troubled with my heart all day."
Rita, poor girl, had been troubled with her heart many days.
"Yes, with my heart," continued the dutiful mother. "Dr. Kennedy says I may drop any moment." (Billy secretly wished that Kennedy had fixed the moment.) "And when I asked her to tell me what she did last night at the social, she answered, 'I can't and won't.' I should have known better than to let her go. She hasn't sense enough to be let out of my sight. She lied to me about the social, too. She pretended that she did not want to go, and she did want to go." That was the real cause of Mrs. Margarita's anger. She suspected she had been duped into consenting, and the thought had rankled in her heart all day.