"Aren't you mean, Grandpa!" she said, indignantly, beginning to read.
"Maybe I am, maybe I am," he retorted fiercely. "But you'll find there's no smoke without some fire, my fine lady, and when a boy that's always been a lazy, idle shame to his father and mother gets a taste of blame, you can depend that no newspaper is going to make a saint of him!"
"Grandma, don't let him talk that way!" Julia protested, her breast rising and falling. Chester turned to his father.
"Maybe if you'd a-give me a better chance," he said sullenly, "maybe if us boys hadn't been kicked around so much, shoved into the first job that came handy, seeing Ma and the girls afraid to breathe while you was in the house—"
Both men were now standing, their faces close together.
"Well, you ain't going to have another chance here!" the old man shouted. "I'll have no jailbirds settin' around here to be petted and babied! Get that into your head! Don't you let me come into the house and find you here again——"
"Pa!" protested Mrs. Cox, fired by the eyes of her granddaughters. "Yes—an' 'Pa'!" he snarled, pulling on his old hat, and opening the kitchen door. "But it'll be Pa on the wrong side of your face if you make any mistake about it! Jailbird!" he muttered to himself, with a final slam at the door. The others looked at each other.
"That's a sweet welcome home," said Chester, with a bitter laugh. He was standing, his head lowered; there was bewilderment as well as anger in his look.
"Pa's got to be a terrible crank," said Mrs. Cox, returning to her teapot, after a glance through the window at her retiring lord. "He carries on something terrible sometimes."
"Well, he won't carry on any longer as far as I am concerned!" Chester said, a little vaguely.