"Straight through the eyes," she hissed, her face a fury's mask, "that's where your needles are going. Get thee before me, Satan!"
Phil never found out whether Juno was, as she seemed, a bit cowed by the diabolical venom in Mary's voice, for just then there was a frantic padding of feet on the stairs and Jack Jones and Cookie burst into the room from the hall.
"Juno!" Jack yelled. "I told you I'd kill you if you ever came here!"
In the ensuing moment of silence Cookie could be heard to confirm primly, "He will, too."
Juno turned on Jack, assuming the stance of a bear. "Listen, you ten-timing little stinker, you're going straight home with me." She hitched up her skirt and began to roll up, or rather rip up, the long sleeves of her frock. Her furpiece had already fallen off and her hat hung by a cropped hair.
Meanwhile Jack was surveying the scene and getting a real idea of how much damage had been done.
"Juno," he said aghast, but advancing, "you've been wrecking the place, you've been wrecking the little people, you even brought the Ikeless Joe!" And in passing he gave Phil a shove that sent him up against the wall, his teeth rattling. "Don't you see what you've done, Juno?" Jack continued with poignantly aggrieved indignation, as if he must convince Juno of the enormity of her actions before liquidating her. "You've done the one thing they won't ever forgive, the one thing that'll turn 'em against even me." He was practically tearful. "Don't you realize they're the only two people in the world that mean anything to me? Don't you realize that outside of Mary and Sacheverell, I don't care a fig for anybody?"
Surprisingly to Phil, the retort to this came not from Juno, who was lifting her now bare arms menacingly, but from Cookie.
"Oh, so you don't care anything about me, either," he accused shrilly. "I've suspected it for a long time, and now you say it yourself."
"Shut up, you're just a dumb stooge," Jack told him without looking around.