“Hot dog!” laughed Poppy in my ear, as tickled as a monkey with the cooties. “I guess she handed him a hot one that trip.”
The visitor’s big ears were on fire now.
“Mrs. Doane,” he rumbled like an angry volcano, “I didn’t come here to bandy words with you. Nor do I feel called upon to show you any writing to back up my position as preliminary administrator of this estate. His chosen legal adviser, I was given certain definite instructions by the late Corbin Danver, just before his death, and to the best of my professional ability I am now trying to carry out those instructions. As I tell you, you’ve got to pack up and get out of here. And the sooner you do it the better for you.”
But Ma held the fort.
“Oh! ... do tell!” came sarcastically. “And suppose I don’t pack up and get out of here—what then?”
“In that case, madam, I’ll see that the law puts you out.”
That was more than the high-spirited little old lady could stand.
“So, you’re going to put me out, are you?” she cried, shaking her fists in the lawyer’s pudgy face. “You and the law! I’d like to see you do it. Yes, you better back up, you big bag of wind. For two cents I’d twist your fat nose. Maybe you’d learn then to keep it where it belongs.”
“Madam! ...” thundered the heaving volcano, as the lava slopped close to the brim.
“Don’t ‘madam’ me. You’re more lucky than you realize that I don’t fly at you and scratch your eyes out. Such an insult! And now that you have had your say, Mr. Lawyer Chew, let me tell you something: The whole state militia can’t drag me out of here if I choose to stay. Is that clear to you? Not that I’m a person to oppose the law, but in this case I don’t believe that you have any right to put me out of here. If Corbin Danver told me once he told me a hundred times that of all his relations there was no one whom he enjoyed having here more than me. I was welcome to come whenever I chose, he said. Nor did he say that his death was to make any difference. Yet you try to put me out! And this in spite of the fact that I was sent here, as I told you last night, by some one who has every right in the world to use the property as she sees fit.”