“What the deuce are you sneering at?” snapped the inventor. “No, there's no patent burglar alarm in this house.”
“Hawkins' Steel Dynamite-Proof Shutters?”
Hawkins ignored the remark and busied himself lighting a cigar.
“Hawkins' Triple-Expansion Spring-Gun?” I hazarded once more.
“Oh, drop it! Drop it!” cried Hawkins. “Positively, Griggs, your efforts at humor disgust one. In some ways, you are as bad as a woman. Go back and sit with the Executive Committee.”
“What's the connection?”
“Why, the thing I expected to show you in a few minutes is the very same one which my wife fought against for two weeks, before she let me put it into operation peacefully!” Hawkins burst out. “There's where the connection comes in between your degenerate little wits and those of the generality of women.”
“If it was an invention, I don't blame your wife one little bit, Hawkins,” I said. “I can see just how she must have felt about——”
“There's the evening paper, if you want to read,” spat forth the inventor, poking the sheet across the library table.
Therewith he turned his back squarely upon me and settled down to a book.