At this mention of the granddaughter, the volcano sort of subsided. And there was a peculiar crafty look in the deepset eyes now.
“What is this that you tell me about Miss Ruth sending you here to open up the house for her? Is she intending to live here?”
With all of her free talk to us, Mrs. Doane was foxy about showing her hand to the enemy.
“I’ll let her talk for herself when she gets here.”
“Then she isn’t here yet?” and instead of craftiness there was satisfaction in the gray-green eyes now.
“If she were,” came sharply, “you’d have been ordered away from here before this. For while you may question my right to be here, I don’t think, if you have any judgment at all, that you would question her right.”
In the further heated talk between the angry man and woman, I got the feeling that it was a case of dog eat dog. They both hated each other. And probably, I concluded, it was to spite the woman more than anything else that the visitor was now threatening to come back in the afternoon with the sheriff.
“Nor will it avail you anything to resist. For I have the law on my side. And I’m going to use it. If necessary,” came the final ugly threat, “we can take you by force and set you down outside of the stone wall. And that’s where you’ll stay until the granddaughter gets here.”
Well, say, if he hadn’t backed down the steps I actually believe that he would have lost what little hair he had. For take it from me that little old lady was mad. Drive her out of the house, would he? Set her down outside of the stone wall in spitework, huh? Gr-r-r-r!
But she went all to pieces when the angry lawyer was gone. She trembled like a leaf. And there was worry and every other kind of grief mixed up in her thin face. The poor old soul! She had tried to be brave but her age was against her. I felt sorry for her. And what I wanted to do to old fatty!