"I don't," blubbered Sallie. "I'll do 'em some evenin' when it's your turn."
"Yes," Mary sneered, "I know how you will."
"I will—I will—I will so!"
Sallie's voice rose to a shrill shriek, and then suddenly broke off in the middle of a note: there was a sound of elephantine stirring from the parlor, and the feared master of the house, moved at last from his lethargy, rolled into the double doorway and seemed nearly to block it.
One of the young reporters of The Spy had once remarked—not in print—that Owen Denbigh resembled nothing so much as the stern of an armored cruiser seen from a catboat. How much of the covering of his powerful frame was fat and how much muscle is matter for conjecture; his life in the iron mills had certainly given him a strength at least approaching the appearance, and had blackened his large hands, reddened his big face, and grayed his bristling hair and his fiercely flaring mustache.
"Whad's ahl this devil's racket?" he shouted, in the voice he used in triumphing over the turmoil of the puddling-furnace.
Both children quailed before him, each prepared regardless of its merits, for acquittal or condemnation, as he might decide the issue. Even Mrs. Denbigh drew back and set her lips to silence.
The giant raised a threatening hand.
"Be ye ahl gone deef?" he demanded. "Whad's ahl this devil's racket fur?"
In a panic of self-preservation, the two girls began at once to clamor forth their woes.