“Canker-worm?” repeated Mrs. Higgins. “Meanin’, your honor—”
“Just what I say—canker-worm. Isn’t he the worm gnawing in discontent at the very core of the fair fruit of established order and peace in the cow country?”
“I—I—don’t understand, your honor,” faltered the woman, in great trepidation. Would his honor consider her a hopeless stupid? But what was the man talking about? Louise looked up, a flush of color staining her cheeks.
“Maybe fire-brand would suit you better, madame? My young friend, the fire-brand,” resumed the Judge, rising. “That is good—fire-brand. Is he not inciting the populace to ‘open rebellion, false doctrine, and schism’? Is it not because of him that roofs are burned over the very heads of the helpless homesteader?”
“For shame, Uncle Hammond,” exclaimed Louise, still flushed and with a mutinous little sparkle in her eyes. “You are poking fun at me. You haven’t any right to, you know; but that’s your way. I don’t care, but Mrs. Higgins doesn’t understand.”
“Don’t you, Mrs. Higgins?” asked the Judge.
“No, I don’t,” snapped Mrs. Higgins, and she didn’t, but she thought she did. “Only if you mean Mr. Richard Gordon, I’ll tell you now there ain’t no one in this here God-forsaken country who can hold a tallow candle to him. Just put that in your pipe and smoke it, will you?”
She piled up dishes viciously. She did not wait for her guests to depart before she began demolishing the table. It was a tremendous breach of etiquette, but she didn’t care. To have an ideal shattered ruthlessly is ever a heart-breaking thing.
“But my dear Mrs. Higgins,” expostulated the Judge.
“You needn’t,” said that lady, shortly. “I don’t care,” she went on, “if the president himself or an archangel from heaven came down here and plastered Dick Gordon with bad-smellin’ names from the crown of his little toe to the tip of his head, I’d tell ’em to their very faces that they didn’t know what they was a talkin’ about, and what’s more they’d better go back to where they belong and not come nosin’ round in other people’s business when they don’t understand one single mite about it. We don’t want ’m puttin’ their fingers in our pie when they don’t know a thing about us or our ways. That’s my say,” she closed, with appalling significance, flattering herself that no one could dream but that she was dealing in the most off-hand generalities. She was far too politic to antagonize, and withal too good a woman not to strike for a friend. She congratulated herself she had been true to all her gods—and she had been.