Part 25

Mrs. Tutts continued to advance and her lips had contracted as though an invisible gathering string had been jerked violently.

"You gotta eat them words, Mis' Jackson." Unwavering purpose was in her voice.

"I'll have the law on you if you begin a ruckus here." Mrs. Jackson moved to the opposite side of the table.

"The law's nothin' to me." Mrs. Tutts went around the table.

"I haven't forgot I'm a lady!" Mrs. Jackson quickened her gait.

"Everybody else has." Mrs. Tutts also accelerated her pace.

"Don't you dast lay hands on me!" Mrs. Jackson broke into a trot.

"Not if I can stomp on you," declared Mrs. Tutts as the back fulness of Mrs. Jackson's skirt slipped through her fingers.

"What's the use of this? I don't want to fight, Mis' Tutts." Mrs. Jackson was galloping and slightly dizzy.

"You will onct you git into it," encouraged Mrs. Tutts, grimly measuring the distance between them with her eye.

"You ought to have your brains beat out for this!" On the thirteenth lap around the table Mrs. Jackson was panting audibly.

"Couldn't reach yours th'out cuttin' your feet off!" responded Mrs. Tutts, in whose eyes gleamed what sporting writers describe as "the joy of battle."

The strength of the hunted hostess was waning visibly.

"I've got heart trouble, Mis' Tutts," she gasped in desperation, "and I'm liable to drop dead any jump!"

"No such luck." Mrs. Tutts made a pass at her across the table.

"This is perfeckly ridic'lous; do you at all realize what you're doin'?"

"I won't," Mrs. Tutts spoke with full knowledge of the deadly insult; "I won't until I git a few handfuls of your red hair!"

Mrs. Jackson stopped in her tracks and fear fell from her. Her roving eye searched the room for a weapon and her glance fell upon the potted geranium. Mrs. Tutts already had possessed herself of the scissors.

"My hair may be red, Mis' Tutts," her shrill voice whistled through the space left by her missing teeth, as she stood with the geranium poised aloft, "but it's my own!"

Mrs. Tutts staggered under the crash of pottery and the thud of packed dirt upon her head. She sank to the floor, but rose again, dazed and blinking, her warlike spirit temporarily crushed.

"There's the door, Mis' Tutts." Mrs. Jackson drew herself up with regal hauteur and pointed. "Now get the hell out of here!"

ESSIE TISDALE'S ENFORCED ABNEGATION

There was one place at least where the popularity of the little belle of Crowheart showed no signs of diminution and this was in the menagerie of domestic animals which occupied quarters in the rear of the large backyard of the hotel. The phlegmatic black omnibus and dray horses neighed for sugar at her coming, the calf she had weaned from the wild range cow bawled at sight of her, while various useless dogs leaped about her in ecstasy, and a mere glimpse of her skirt through the kitchen doorway was sufficient to start such a duet from the two excessively vital and omniverous mammals whom Essie had ironically named Alphonse and Gaston that Van Lennop, who had the full benefit of this chorus, often wished the time had arrived for Alphonse and Gaston to fulfil their destiny. Yet he found diversion, too, in her efforts to instil into their minds the importance of politeness and unselfishness and frequently he laughed aloud at the fragments of conversation which reached him when he heard her laboring with them in the interest of their manners.

A loud and persistent squealing caused Van Lennop to raise his eyes from his book and look out upon the pole corral wherein the vociferous Alphonse and Gaston were confined. Essie Tisdale was perched upon the top pole, seemingly deaf to their shrill importunities; depression was in every line of her slim figure, despondency in the droop of her head. Her attitude held his attention and set him wondering, for he thought of her always as the embodiment of laughter, good-humor, and exuberant youth. Of all the women he ever had known, either well or casually, she had seemed the farthest from moods or nerves or anything even dimly suggestive of the neurasthenic.

Moved by an impulse Van Lennop laid down his book and went below.

"Air-castles, Miss Tisdale?" he asked as he sauntered toward her. He still insisted upon the whimsical formality of "Miss Tisdale," although to all Crowheart, naturally, she was "Essie."

The girl lifted her sombre eyes at the sound of his voice and the shadow in them gave them the look of deep blue velvet, Van Lennop thought.

"You only build air-castles when you are happy, don't you? and hopeful?"