"Jennie! This is my husband's home, and his feeble mother shall be his guest and mine until to-morrow morning."
"She ain't his mother, she ain't even a blood relation. And what right have you, I'd like to know, to meddle in our family affairs?" Jennie fiercely demanded. "It's just your contrariness that makes you want to do everything that you see will spite us; for what other reason would a person like you have for taking up with an uneducated old woman like Mom? You wouldn't look at a person like her if it was not to spite us!"
"What right have I? The right of the humane to protect the helpless from brutality, under any and all circumstances, without exception. She shall not leave this house to-day!"
"Now, Mom," Sadie turned on her step-mother, "you see what you make by coming here like this, without leaving us know! Ain't you worrying us enough all the time, without raising more trouble between us and Danny's wife yet?"
"Yes, yes, I'll go. Please, my dear"—she turned to Margaret,—"leave me go. I'd rather die on the way home than stay and make it unhappy for you, Margaret! Danny will take up for them, you know, so I can't stay and make trouble. Leave me go, my dear!"
"But if you don't make your mother welcome here," Margaret addressed both Jennie and Sadie, "I shall have to go with her. I can take her to Catherine Hamilton's for the night. Or," she added with sudden inspiration, "to Mrs. Ocksreider's, and ask her if she won't give her a bed until the morning. She shall not take that journey to-night!"
Jennie glared in baffled fury, while Sadie turned white with dismay.
"Danny won't leave you do such an outrageous thing!" the elder sister said hoarsely.
"Daniel can't stop me. Come, mother."
"You don't mean to say you'd do as mean a thing as that—take Mom to Mrs. Ocksreider's!"