He answered Gilfoyle's menace, bluntly, “I'll pay you when hell freezes over, and not a cent before.”
“Well, then, you stand from under,” Gilfoyle squealed. “There's a law in this State against home-wreckers like you, and I can send you to the penitentiary for breaking it.”
Dyckman's rage blackened again; he caught Gilfoyle by the shoulder and roared: “You foul-mouthed, filthy-minded little sneak! You say a word against your wife and I'll throw you out of the window. She's too decent for you to understand. You get down on your knees and ask her pardon.”
He forced Gilfoyle to his knees, but he could not make him pray. And Kedzie fell back from him. She was afraid to pose as a saint worthy of genuflection. Connery re-entered the conflict with a sneer:
“Aw, tell it to the judge, Dyckman! Tell it to the judge! See how good it listens to him. We'll tell him how we found you here; and you tell him you were holding a prayer-meeting. You didn't want to be disturbed, so you didn't have even a servant around—all alone together at this hour.”
Then a new, strange voice spoke in.
“Who said they were alone?”
The four turned to see Mrs. Thropp filling the hall doorway, and Adna's head back of her shoulder. It was really a little too melodramatic. The village lassie goes to the great city; her father and mother arrive in all their bucolic innocence just in time to save her from destruction.
Connery, whose climax she had spoiled, though she had probably saved his bones, gasped, “Who the hell are you?”
“I'm this child's mother; that's who I am. And that's her father. And what's more, we've been here all evening, and you'd better look out how you swear at me or I'll sick Mr. Dyckman on you.”