"—perfectly free to have a telephone if you want one," she continued. "The doctor came this evening and it really wasn't necessary. Don't you see you could have telephoned for me and saved him the trip?"
It was due to the most stupendous exertion of self-restraint on my part that I said: "Well, I'll be—jiggered," instead of something a little less unique. Her audacity staggered me. (I was not prepared at that time to speak of it as superciliousness.)
"Madam," I exploded, "will you be good enough to listen to me? I am not to be trifled with. To-morrow sometime I shall enter the east wing of this building if I have to knock down all the doors on the place. Do you understand, madam?"
"I do hope, Mr. Smart, you can arrange to break in about five o'clock. It will afford me a great deal of pleasure to give you some tea. May I expect you at five—or thereabouts?"
Her calmness exasperated me. I struck the stone balustrade an emphatic blow with my fist, sorely peeling the knuckles, and ground out:
"For two cents I'd do it to-night!"
"Oh, dear,—oh, dear!" she cried mockingly.
"You must be a dreadful woman," I cried out. "First, you make yourself at home in my house; then you succeed in stopping my workmen, steal my cook and men-servants, keep us all awake with a barking dog, defying me to my very face—"
"How awfully stern you are!"
"I don't believe a word you say about a sick baby,—or a doctor! It's all poppy-cock. To-morrow you will find yourself, bag and baggage, sitting at the bottom of this hill, waiting for—"