"I'll have that tea."
"No, you sha'n't. When folks are in error I never give in to 'em. That's my principle and I stick to it."
When she said "principle" I pretty nigh fell over. If she'd got the "principle" disease the case was desperate. Anyhow, I thought 'twas about time for somebody with a teaspoonful of common sense to take a hand.
"See here," says I, "for grown-up folks this is the most ridiculous doin's I ever heard of. Mrs. Hammond, for the land sakes let him have his tea and maybe we'll have peace along with it."
She turned to me. "Cap'n Snow," she says, "speakin' as one who has learned to rise above their baser self, and perfectly calm and good-tempered, I advise you to mind your own business. I don't care nothin' about the tea itself; it's the principle I'm strivin' for, I tell you. Do you s'pose I'll let that little withered-up, sassy, benighted scoffer—"
"There! there!" says I. Then I bent down to the keyhole. "Lemuel," I says, "be a man and not prize inmate in a feeble-minded home. You're not an idiot. Apologize to this lady and, if you can't get tea, take hot water."
The answer I got was hotter than any water he was likely to get, enough sight. And there was some "principle" in it, too.
"Well," says I, disgusted, "I'm durn glad that I'm unprincipled. Fight it out amongst yourselves, but don't you either of you dare come nigh me. I mean that." And I went into my room and locked that door.
For two hours I stayed there, readin' some and thinkin' a whole lot more. Down-stairs Aunt Lucindy was singin' at the top of her lungs—to show how good her temper was, I presume likely—and out in the upper hall Cousin Lemuel was tiptoein' back and forth and yellin' at her that he'd have his tea in spite of her, and passin' comments on her music. I never knew two such stubborn critters in my life, and I couldn't see any signs of either of 'em givin' in, long as their principles held out.
I remembered a conundrum that, when I was a young one in school, the teacher used to spring on the big boys in the first class in arithmetic. 'Twas somethin' like this: