"Why, that's all right, mother; that's what you made me put the shutters on down here for. If you'd just come and told me quietly, why, I might a' got him from your window. Did you see him?"
"I don't know," she moaned. "He had a gun. I saw one end of it."
"Are you sure it was a gun? Which end did you see, the butt or the muzzle?"
Mrs. March only gasped. She was too refined a woman to mention either end of a gun by name. "I saw—the—front end."
"He didn't aim it at you, or at anything, did he?"
"No—yes—he aimed it—sidewise."
"Sideways! Now, mother, there I draw the line! No man shall come around here aiming his gun sideways; endangering the throngs of casual bystanders!"
"Ah! John, is this the time to make your captive and beleaguered mother the victim of ribald jests?"
"My dear mother, no! it's a time to go to bed. If that fellow's still nosing 'round here with his gun aimed sideways he's protection enough! But seriously, mother, whatever you mean by being embargoed and blockaded——"
"I did not say embargoed and blockaded!"