“My dear Josephine!” cried Mr. Sage, screwing up his face as if in pain.
“Oh, Lord!” she breathed, staring bleakly at her husband.
A close observer might have noted the sudden quivering of her lower lip, instantly lost, however, in the shamed and penitent smile that wiped away every trace of the irritation aroused by the argument. “There I go again! Backsliding almost to Grand Crossing. In another minute I would have been in Chicago. Good thing you stopped me, Herbert. And I sha’n’t in the least mind if you give me a good thrashing when you get me home. It’s the only way to break me of—”
“Go for ’em—go for ’em, Mrs. Sage,” cried Mr. Baxter. “Give ’em hell! They ain’t got any right to whoop and yell like that in this house. They’ll wake the baby—if it ain’t dead—and—”
“They’d wake it if it was dead,” said Mrs. Grimes, coming from the kitchen at that moment with a steaming pail in her hand.
“Never mind, Josephine,” said Mr. Sage gently. “I am sure our good friends will overlook—oh, by the by, Joseph, there are two strange women on the porch. Perhaps you—”
“Go see who it is, Joe,” commanded Mrs. Grimes crisply. “You come upstairs now, Oliver, and put your feet in this pail of mustard and water. Come on, now. Say good night to—”
“But, doggone it, I don’t want to go upstairs. I don’t want to put my feet in—”
“Do you want that boy of yours to be an orphan before he’s hardly had his eyes open?” demanded Mrs. Grimes, severely. “Well, that’s what he’ll be if you catch lung fever.”
“Better do what Serepty says, Ollie,” advised Mr. Link.