"I'd like to know, for my part, just what you mean, Penton Baxter, spying on me this way—bursting in on poor Johnnie Gregory and me like a maniac, while we were only reading poetry together."
"—reading poetry together!" he echoed bitterly, almost collapsing, as he went into a chair.
Again I tried to make my exit.
"Johnnie, I want you to stay. I want to have all this out right here and now," snapped Baxter decisively.
"Very well ... if you put it that way."
"—a nice way to treat your guest," Hildreth interposed, "the way you've been raving about him, too. 'Johnnie Gregory' this, and 'Johnnie Gregory' that!—and the minute he arrives, first you try to make him put up at the community inn; and now you accuse him of—of—"
Hildreth began to weep softly....
And then began a performance at which I stood aside, mentally, in admiration ... the way that little woman handled her husband!
She wept, she laughed, she upbraided, she cajoled ... at one moment swore she wanted nothing better than to die, at the other, vowed eternal fidelity till old age overtook them both....