The handsome old lady paused to draw breath, and looked so much excited with this recapitulation of her domestic wrongs, that Mrs. Lyndsay thought it not improbable she had performed her own part in the scolding.
As to Flora, she was highly amused by the old Captain’s vagaries. “By-the-bye,” she said, “had he any luck in shooting this morning? He was out by sunrise with his gun.”
The old lady fell back in her chair, and laughed immoderately.
“Shooting! Yes, yes, that was another frolic of his. But Kitson’s an old fool, and I have told him so a thousand times. So you saw him this morning with the gun?”
“Why, I was afraid he might shoot Lyndsay, who was shaving at the window. The captain pointed his gun sometimes at the window, and sometimes at the eaves of the house, but as the gun always missed fire, I began to regain my courage, and so did the sparrows, for they only chattered at him in defiance.”
“And well they might. Why, my dear, would you believe it, he had no powder in his gun! Now, Mrs. Lyndsay, you will perhaps think that I am telling you a story, the thing is so absurd; yet I assure you that it’s strictly true. But you know the man. When my poor Nelly died, she left all her little property to her father, as she knew none of her late husband’s relations—never was introduced to one of them in her life. In her dressing-case he found a box of charcoal for cleaning teeth, and in spite of all that I could say or do, he insisted that it was gunpowder. ‘Gunpowder!’ says I, ‘what would our Nelly do with gunpowder? It’s charcoal, I tell you.’”
“Then he smelt it, and smelt it—‘’Tis gunpowder, Sally! Don’t you think, that I know the smell of gunpowder? I, that was with Nelson at Copenhagen and Trafalgar?’
“‘’Tis the snuff in your nose, that makes everything smell alike;’ says I. ‘Do you think, that our Nelly would clean her beautiful white teeth with gunpowder?’
“‘Why not?’ says he; ‘there’s charcoal in gunpowder. And now, Madam, if you dare to contradict me again, I will shoot you with it, to prove the truth of what I say!’
“Well, after that, I held my tongue, though I did not choose to give up. I thought to spite him, so for once I let him have his own way. He spent an hour last night cleaning his old rusty gun; and rose this morning by daybreak with the intention of murdering all the sparrows. No wonder that the sparrows laughed at him. I have done nothing but laugh ever since—so out of sheer revenge, he proclaimed a cleaning day; and he and Kelly are now hard at it.”