"You heard him," she gasped.
"Yes," snapped the visitor, his voice uncontrollably resuming its former timbre, "and you heard me, too!"
The mistress is, of necessity, always, in a crisis, against the slave.
"Well," said Rose, "tell me what she done."
Violet, however, saw at once the necessity of changing the issue.
"He says he's been robbed!" she called down the stairs. And then she ran after her words, and stood under the lamp, facing them both, her arms extended, the flowing sleeves trembling with the emotion that they covered but could not conceal. "Search me!" she commanded. "If you think I took a cent of yours, search me!"
She was a vision that brought conviction with it.
Before the sputtering visitor could correct the situation, Rose had, perhaps against her will, been converted. She took the man's hat from the hall-rack at her side, put it on his head, opened the street-door, and gently propelled him through it.
"You're drunk," she said, "an' you'd better get out before I call the cop. There ain't no badger business in this house, an' don't you forget it!"
She shut the door, and turned calmly to Violet.