"It's the Ninety-Nine Mile House. There's a sign-board right across the road:—
THE NINETY-NINE
MRS. JESSE SMITH
HOTEL, STORE, LIVERY.
"She did that to spite Jesse, and they call the place Spite House."
Just then the maid brought in the tea things, so, cowardly as usual, I played hostess, delaying all the news I dared not face. We gossiped of Captain Taylor's half-bred child, Wee James at school down East, of Tearful George married to that dreadful young person at Eighty Mile House who scratched herself at meals, so Jesse said. At the Hundred-and-Four, where Hundred Mile Hill casts its tremendous shadow on the lowlands northward, Pete Mathson and his wife were making new harness for the Star Pack-train. There a shadow fell on our attempt at gossip—why does the conversation always stop at twenty minutes past? Billy began to tell me about Spite House.
Spite House! How right Father Jared was. "Sword versus dragon," he told us, "is heroic: sword versus cockroach is heroics. Don't draw your sword on a cockroach."
This much I tried to explain to young O'Flynn, whose Irish blood has a fine sense of humor. But the smile he gave me was one of pity, turning my heart to ice. "Jesse," he said, "made that mistake. That's why I've come six thousand miles to warn you. Howly Mother, if I'd only the eddication to talk so I'd be understood!
"I'm going to try another course. See here, mum. You've heered tell of Cachalot whales. They runs say eighty tons for full whales—one hundred fifty horse-power, dunno how many knots, full of fight to the last drop of blood. That stands for Jesse.
"And them sperm whales is so contemptuous of the giant squid they uses her for food. She's small along of a sperm whale, but she's mean as eight python snakes with a devil in the middle. That'll do for Polly.
"Well, last voyage I seen one of them she-nightmares strangle a bull Cachalot, and the sight turned me sick as a dog. Now, d'ye understand what Polly's doing? I told you I hated Jesse. I told you straight to your face why I hated him. And now, mum, I'm only sorry for poor Jesse."
It was then, I think, that I began really to be terrified. Never in the old days at the ranch had Billy been off his guard even with me. Now he let me know his very heart. I could not help but trust him, and it was no small uneasiness which had brought the lad to England.