“He insulted you,” exclaimed the woman in maudlin fury, “I shall punish him.”
Stargarde towered above her, strong and firm and beautiful, and would not release her. “Who are you?” she said in surprise. “You speak Italian and French, and now good English; I thought you were Zeb’s mother.”
“So I be,” said the woman sulkily, relapsing into inelegant language, and pulling her hair over her eyes so that Stargarde could not see her features distinctly. “Here, give me that stick,” and seeing that Stargarde would not obey her, she began beating the man with her fists.
“Oh, this is dreadful,” gasped Stargarde, holding her back and gazing around the room, half choked by the heat, which was bringing out and developing a dozen different odors, each fouler than the last. “How can I leave Zeb here? Give me the child, won’t you?” she said pleadingly to the woman.
“No, no,” and a stream of foreign ejaculations and asseverations poured from the woman’s lips, in which the man at the table, comprehending dully what was said, hastened to add his quota.
Stargarde turned to look at him, and found that he was fondling tenderly a little monkey that had crept to his bosom. She remembered hearing Zeb say that her father loved his monkey and would feed it if they all had to go hungry.
“Sweet, Pedro, thou art beautiful,” he murmured, and Stargarde seeing that he cared nothing for the friend whom his wife was so unmercifully beating, knew that she must not relax in her protection of the unfortunate one, or there might be broken bones, and possibly loss of life before morning.
“You were kind to want to protect me,” she said, catching the woman’s wrists in her hands and holding them firmly; “but you should not beat the man. He would not have hurt me. I am never afraid of drunken people. See, I will take him away from you,” and sliding her hand under the little man’s shirt collar she slipped him swiftly over the floor to the doorway. Strong and muscular, and a trained athlete though she was a woman, she did easily in cool blood what the other woman had only been able to do in her rage.
Zeb’s mother precipitating herself upon her, hindered her from opening the door, till Zeb sprang from the bed and addressed her unreasoning parent in an eager jargon, in which Stargarde knew she plainly told her of the evil consequences which would arise from the indulgence of her wrath.
The woman, not too far gone to be amenable to reason, came so quickly to her daughter’s view of the matter that she even gave the now insensible man several helping kicks to assist Stargarde in dragging him out into the hall. Stargarde going ahead, slid him down the few steps to the next landing, where she laid his head on a bed of snow, and bound her handkerchief around an ugly cut on his wrist.