"Well, he needn't have come! We telegraphed them not to!"
"Inez!"
The girl subsided, and Billiard found courage to leer triumphantly at her discomfiture. But Tabitha intercepted the glance, and in that ominously calm voice which had struck terror to his cowardly heart before, she announced, "It is too late now to think of that side of the question. We'll have to make the most of a bad situation; but I will not tolerate fighting. You may as well understand that first as last. If you boys can't behave like gentlemen, you can just move on down to the hotel. Is that plain?"
"Yes, sir—ma'am," stammered the abashed Billiard, glancing uneasily about for some means of escape, but Tabitha had delivered her ultimatum, and now swept grandly into the house, satisfied that she had displayed her authority in a very impressive manner.
Hardly had the screen closed behind her, however, when her sharp ears caught Billiard's hoarsely whispered question, "Who is that high-headed geezer?"
"The girl who is taking care of us," answered Mercedes unguardedly.
"Girl?"
"Sure! What did you take her for?"
"A—a new woman. A—one of these things that's trying to vote and do men's work and such like."
"Oho!" yelled the McKittrick girls in unison. "Why, she ain't much older'n us!"