The culprit sighed and sat down on the bundles. Even young Johnson lost his desire to laugh, for Bidwell looked pathetically old and discouraged at the moment, as he mildly asked:
"You wouldn't send a man out in the night without his blankets, would you?"
"I'd send a sneak to purgatory—if I c'u'd. Ye thought ye'd ooze out, did ye? Nice speciment you are!"
Bidwell was roused. "If I had planned to sneak I wouldn't 'a' come into the room with you a-standin' in the middle of the floor," he replied, with some firmness. "You ordered me out, didn't you? Well, I'm goin'. I can't pay you—you knew that when you told me to go—and I owe you a good deal—I admit that—but I'm going to pay it. But I must have a little time."
The other men, with a grateful sense of delicacy, got up and went out, leaving Bidwell free space to justify himself in the eyes of the angry woman.
As the door slammed behind the last man the widow walked over and gave Bidwell a cuff. "Get off thim boondles. Gaw set on a chair like a man, an' not squat there like a baboon." She pitched his bundles through an open door into a small bedroom. "Ye know where yer bed is, I hope! I do' know phwat Dan Delaney w'u'd say to me, housin' and feedin' the likes o' you, but I'll do it wan more summer—and then ye gaw flyin'. Ye hear that now!"
And she threw the door back on its hinges so sharply that a knob was broken.
Bidwell went in, closed the door gently, and took to his bed, dazed with this sudden change in the climate. "She's come round before—and surprised me," he thought, "but never so durn sudden as this. I hope she ain't sick or anything."
Next morning at breakfast Maggie was all smiles. The storm of the evening before had given place to brilliant sunshine. She ignored all winks and nudgings among her boarders, and did not scruple to point out to Bidwell the choicest biscuit on the plate, and to hand him the fattest slice of bacon, all of which he accepted without elation.
"Old Sherm must be one o' these hypnotical chaps," said Johnson as they were lighting their pipes in the sitting-room. "He's converted the widow into another helping. He's goin' to get his flour and bacon all right!"