“We’ve been here some hours, and we still have no towels or electric lights.”
“Be reasonable. I ask you, lady, one thing, if possible.” Heavy sarcasm. “Be reasonable. I’ve got my troubles, same as you have. All the world has its troubles. Now why can’t you stand yours with a little patience?”
“I’m sorry for your troubles,” said Miss Susan, sympathetically. “But we are paying for towels and electric lights. Why shouldn’t you give them to us?”
At this John became violent.
“Lady! Go!” He pointed dramatically to the dam, and the road out into the wilderness beyond. “Go! I don’t want you! And never come back again. Lady, if everyone was like you, I’d go crazy. You’ve been asking for something ever since you struck the place. Why, since you’ve come here, the help has all come to me and give notice. Now, get out!”
For fear he might carry out the eviction on the spot, and send us on sixteen miles of precipitous darkness, we again retreated. After supper, facing the terrifying prospect of feeling her way to bed, lightless, and with no lock on the door to keep out inebriated landlords or mountain lions, Miss Susan resolved on action. She tiptoed to the dining room, and was in the act of unscrewing a bulb from its socket when John appeared from the vicinity of the kitchen. At sight of his arch enemy thus outraging his hospitality, anger and grief swelled within him. Probably the only thing that kept Miss Susan, dauntless but scared, from being completely annihilated was that he could not decide which one of her to begin on first.
“Lady!” he exclaimed, sorrowfully, as if he could not believe his eyes,—and possibly he could not—“Lady! Off my own dining-room table!”
He reached wobbly but sublime heights of forbearance, his voice filled with reproachful irony.
“Lady, I got one thing to ask you. Only one. If you got to take my electric lights,—if you’ve sunk as low as that, lady,—all I ask is, don’t take ’em off my dining-room table. I’ve seen all sorts of people here in my day,—all sorts, but none of them would steal the lights off my dining-room table.”
“I have never been so insulted in all my life,” exclaimed Miss Susan.