"I do; and I warn you now that I shall never resign."
"I have heard papa say that life is short and the tenure of office uncertain. I can remove you at any time I please. Now do you understand that this is a serious business? There's likely to be a lot of trouble, and no time for asking questions, so when I say it's so it's so."
"It's so," repeated Ardmore docilely.
"Now, here's the sheriff at Kildare, on our side of the line, who writes to say that he is powerless to catch Appleweight. He's afraid of the dark, that man! You see, the grand jury in Dilwell County—that's Kildare, you know—has indicted Appleweight as a common outlaw, but the grand jurors were all friends of Appleweight and the indictment was only to satisfy law-and-order sentiment and appease the Woman's Civic League of Raleigh. Now, papa doesn't—I mean I don't want to offend those Appleweight people by meddling in this business. Papa wants Governor Osborne to arrest Appleweight in South Carolina; but I don't believe Governor Osborne will dare do anything about it. Now, Mr. Ardmore, I am not going to have papa called a coward by anybody, particularly by South Carolina people, after what Governor Osborne said of our state."
"Why, what did he say?"
"He said in a speech at Charleston last winter that no people who fry their meat can ever amount to anything, and he meant us! I can never forgive him for that; besides, his daughter is the stuck-upest thing! And I'd like Barbara Osborne to tell me how she got into the Colonial Dames, and what call she has to be inspector-general of the Granddaughters of the Mexican War; for I've heard my grandfather Dangerfield say many a time that old Colonel Osborne and his South Carolina regiment never did go outside of Charleston until the war was over and the American army had come back home."
One tiny fist this time! Ardmore was sure of it. Her indignation against the Osbornes was so sincere, the pouting petulance to which it diminished so like a child's, and the gravity of the offense so novel in his simple experiences, that Ardmore was bound in chains before her speech was finished. The little drawl with which she concluded gave heightened significance to her last three words, so that it seemed that all the veterans of the war with Mexico trudged by, bearing the flag of North Carolina and no other banner.