“Here, here. You've already had enough to kill ten men.”
“That's what I was about to say, your honor, and I will not harrow your honor's feelings by telling more of his awful assault. Seeing that I was suffering in this manner, my mother approached with an oar, when she—her” (indicating Nannie by pointing fixedly and by a stony glare) “rushed upon her fiercely and caused her dog also to charge upon her, which he did so savagely as to decompose her raiment. In some way the oar flew out of her hand, and she was most disrespectfully whirled around and around, so that she is yet dizzy-headed.”
Here madam put her hand to her brow in confirmation.
“I was then taken by the scruff of the neck down to the pier, and whether I fell in the lake or not I cannot say, but I was wet!”
Here the on-lookers shouted with laughter.
“My mother was then disrespectfully helped in and we were sent adrift.”
He ended in a high-toned, pitiful whine suggestive of a dog's song on a moonlight night, but this plaint was drowned in the roars of laughter raised by the audience.
Madam Anderson confirmed and embellished this tale, but Steve's and Nannie's narrative, giving the circumstances of the case, their purchase of the place, the annoyances to which these people had subjected them, the warning that had been sounded to keep them at arm's length, and the continued disregard of all this, sufficed, in the opinion of the Court, to acquit them and fix the burden of the expenses entailed by the suit upon the Anderson shoulders.
One would have supposed that this episode would have satisfied Nannie for awhile, but she was tireless, and must needs start out to sit hens soon after the Andersons were laid low. Now, of all unreasoning, stupid, obstinate, contrary beasts, a sitting hen is well qualified to carry off the first prize. Nannie had been told that when a hen began to puff up her feathers until she was swollen to about three times her natural size, and make a noise that sounded as if she had tried to say something and the word caught on a hook in her throat, she was ready to sit. Having three feathered animals in this condition, and having coaxed Steve into buying some Plymouth Rock eggs at the trivial sum of three dollars a sitting, Nannie proceeded to capture the hens and put them upon nests of her own placing, wholly ignorant of the fact that if there is one thing above all others in which a hen must have her say, it was in the choice of residence during this vexatious period. From the moment that Nannie put the hens upon the eggs she led a life of unexampled activity. No sooner would she turn her back than the various madams would rise, and with distended feathers and gurgling clucks dismount from the nests and begin to stalk around the yard, in defiance of directions to the contrary. The number of times that Steve was pushed under one side of the house in pursuit of the escaped—lunatic, I had almost said, and told to remain there while Nannie ran around and crawled under the other side to head her off, would pass belief. As a matter of course she was never caught by this double-barreled attack, but always stalked out from some unexpected crevice and promenaded the yard as if she owned the premises. The next move on Steve's and Nannie's part would be to drive her nestward. The result of this was always to land her in some place precisely opposite; for the moment she was headed properly she would tilt her wings and break into a fat, wheezy little run in the direction just contrary to the one indicated by common sense and lawful authority.
One day, after an hour of this sport, Nannie lost patience, and picking up stones, pelted the feathered truant until she fled out of sight—in the wrong direction.