“I brought up my son to obey his father in everything, and there wasn’t a better boy in the town.”
“I want to know! He was dreadful nice when you had him under your thumb, for you was so strict with him he darsn’t say his soul was his own; but he made up for it when he got loose. Sech capers! He made a tom-boy of our Becky, and was jest as full of mischief as he could stick.”
“No matter about my son, Hulda Prime; he’s out of the way now.”
“Yes; cos you wanted to put him to a trade after he’d been through the academy. He didn’t like that, and started off to get a college education, and you shut the door agin him, and you locked up your money, and vowed he should starve afore you’d help him. But they do say he’s been through Harvard College in spite of yer.”
“Hulda Prime, you’re a meddlin’ old woman,” roared the captain, thoroughly enraged, “and it’s a pity somebody didn’t start you off years ago—hangin’ round where you ain’t wanted.”
“I never hung round your house much—did I, cap’n?” cried Aunt Hulda, with a triumphant grin, which evidently started the neuralgic pains, for she sank back with a groan.
While this passage of tongues was going on inside the house, Miss Becky appeared in the road, mounted on Uncle Ned, who looked rather jaded, as though he had been put to a hard gallop. Flinging herself from his back she entered the door, when the form of Captain Thompson, braced in the kitchen door-way,—which position he had not forsaken even in the height of debate,—met her eyes. Her first thought was to regain the safe companionship of Uncle Ned; but a desire to know what was going on overcame her sense of danger, and she gently lifted the latch of the door which opened to the garret stairs, and stepped inside. The warlike parties in the kitchen covered her retreat with the clamor of their tongues.
“Now, Delia, I want you to listen to reason,” continued the captain, turning from the vanquished spinster to the silent woman, who had kept busily at work during the combat. “You’re too easy with them children. They want a strong hand to keep them in line. Now you know I’m a good friend to you and yours; and though Cyrus Sleeper treated me rather shabbily—”
“My gracious! hear that man talk!” blurted out Aunt Hulda. “It’s no such thing, and you know it. You made more money out of his Californy speculation with that air ship than you ever made afore in your life.”
“Will you be quiet, woman?” roared the captain. “I ain’t talkin’ to you, and don’t want any of your meddlin’.”