“Well, now, I declare,” said Pet, “if this is not as good as a play and moral. I’m afraid you’re only plagiarizing, though, Mr. Garnet, for that melodramatic ‘girl, beware!’ sounds very like something I read in the ‘Pink Bandit of the Cranberry Cove.’ Confess, now, you’ve been reading it—haven’t you?—and that’s an extract from it; and, at the same time, you’ll oblige me by letting go my arm. It’s not made of cast-iron, though you seem to think it is.”
“Laugh, girl!” he said, hoarsely, “but the day will come when you shall sue to me, and sue in vain, even as I have done to-day. Then you will know what it is to despise Rozzel Garnet.”
“Why, you horrid old fright!” exclaimed Pet, with flashing eyes, “I sue to you, indeed! I guess not, my good teacher! How dare you threaten me, sir, your master’s daughter! Upon my word and honor, Mr. Rozzel Garnet, I have the best mind ever was to have you horsewhipped out of the house by my servants. A pretty chivalrous gentleman you are, to stand up there and talk to a lady like this! I declare to goodness! if I hadn’t the temper of an angel, I wouldn’t stand it!”
Still he held her, glaring in her face with his threatening eyes, and half-choked with passion.
“Let me go,” said Pet, jerking herself first one way, and then another, to free herself from his tenacious grasp. “I vow I’ll go and tell papa every blessed word of this, and if you stay another night under the same roof with me, my name’s not Petronilla. Take your claw from my arm, will you? and let me go!”
Pet jerked and pulled in vain; Mr. Garnet held her fast, and smiled a grim, sardonic smile at her futile efforts.
“Spit and snarl, my little kitten,” he said mockingly; “see what a sparrow you are in my grasp. Go you shall not, till it is my good pleasure to release you!”
With a sharp, passionate cry of rage, Petronilla darted down like lightning, and sunk her sharp, white teeth into his hand. The red blood spurted from a little circlet of wounds, and with an oath of pain and fury, he sprung back from the little wild-cat. No sooner was his hold released, than Pet darted like a flash through the door, turned the key in the lock and held him captive.
“Aha! Mr. Garnet!” she cried, exultingly; “little kittens can bite as well as snarl, you see. You caught a Tartar that time—didn’t you? You’re a model gentleman; you’re the saint that ought to be canonized on the spot; you’re the refined scholar—ain’t you? I’ll leave you, now, to discover the charms of solitude, while I go and tell papa the lesson I have taught you this morning. A little fasting and solitary imprisonment won’t hurt your blood in the least. Bon jour, Seigneur Don Monsieur Moustache Whiskerando! May your guardian-angel watch over you till I come back, and keep you from bursting a blood-vessel in your rage. If anything should happen to so precious an individual, society might as well shut up shop at once, so the gods have a care of you, Mr. Rozzel Garnet!” And off danced Pet.
In the dining-room she found her father awaiting her.