She shot at him from those covering brows of hers a look that was malignant and vindictive. It missed him clean.
"Y—y—you——!" Whatever word she would have uttered she drew it back with her vehement breath. "What did you do that for?"
"Why, because I don't want the fellow in the house."
"Why—don't—you want him?" Her shaking voice crept now as if under cover.
"Because I don't approve of him. That's why."
"What have you got against him?"
"Never you mind. I don't approve of him. No more would you if you knew anything about him. Don't you worry. You couldn't stand him, Vi, if you had him here."
She pushed her plate violently away from her with its untasted food, and planted her elbows on the table. She leaned forward, her chin sunk in her hands, the raised arms supporting this bodily collapse. Foreshortened, flattened by its backward tilt, its full jowl strained back, its chin thrust toward him and sharpened to a V by the pressure of her hands, its eyes darkened and narrowed under their slant lids, her face was hardly recognizable as the face he knew.
But its sinister, defiant, menacing quality was lost on Ranny. He said to himself: "She's rattled, poor girl; and she's worried. That's why she looks so queer."
"You haven't told me yet," she persisted, "what you've got against him."