His words are interrupted by a loud knock on the door.
“Do ye hear that?” he hisses. “Now, that parson’s coming in to finish this marryin’ business, or I’m goin’ right out of here, and the gal along with me, if I have to cut my way straight through ye! The gal can sign the paper if she likes, but she’ll sign it Leschen Francoise, or she’ll never sign it at all!”
And before they can guess his intentions, he has caught Leslie up and fairly carried her to the outer room. In a flutter of fear and rage, Mamma follows, and Papa hovers in the open doorway.
“Franz Francoise!” shrieks Mamma, the tiger now fairly awake in her eyes.
“Give me that paper, boy!” she fairly hisses.—[page 406].
But he pays no heed to her rage. He releases his hold upon Leslie, and flings open the door.
“I don’t know as we will have any funeral, after all,” he says cheerfully, to the two who enter. “There’s a kind of a hitch in the arrangements.”
The new-comers, the foremost in the garb of a Priest, and the other evidently a very humble citizen, stop near the open door and glance curiously around. And then a third citizen appears, and fairly fills up the doorway.