"Oh, is that you? Really, I didn't expect to see you again. It's a pretty time to come poking home now, when you were to be here to go to church with us. Oh, you needn't blink your eyes, having us get ready and set here and wait and wait."
"Mad and dressed up," muttered the Professor. "What could be more pitiable? Don't go," he whispered to Milford. "I pray thee, gentle keeper, stay by me. Idiomatically, I am half shot."
"Let me go," said Milford.
"Not on your idiomatic life," muttered the Professor. "Mother, I am very sorry that I didn't get here in time to accompany you and my daughter to the humble house of the Lord. But we may not be too late now to catch the welcome end of a long sermon."
A voice came from within the house. "Is that pa?"
"Yes," the Professor's wife replied, "and he's as drunk as a fool."
"Oh, for pity sake! How dreadful, how humiliating to us! But he never thinks of us." An inner door slammed.
Milford strove to pull away. The Professor clung to him. "It is not fear," he said. "It is a sort of awe that the sex inspires. But there is a time for boldness. Madam, you have told your daughter that I am drunk. I am here to refute that statement. I am not drunk. My friend is not drunk. We drank some cider, sinuous with age, but we are not drunk. He is a man of high moral character, and I breathe a respect for letters——"
"Your breath would scorch a feather right now," she snapped, looking at him with contempt, her hands on her hips.
"I deny that statement, also. I am here to refute it. I have been merrier than is my wont; we have shaken warm hands over a stone jug, but nobody's character was assailed. And I had thought, in view of the fact that I present a neighbor, you would treat me with a little more courtesy."