Termagant

“ Lady flashed forward to do battle with the stranger who was monopolizing so much of the Master’s attention. Knave, not at all averse to battle (especially with a smaller dog) , braced himself and then moved forward, stiff-legged, fangs bare.
But of a sudden his head went up; his stiff-poised brush broke into swift wagging; his lips curled down. He had recognized that his prospective foe was not of his own sex. (And nowhere, except among humans, does a full-grown male ill-treat or even defend himself against the female of his species.) ”

“ Lady, horror-struck at this sacrilege, whimpered in terror. But her plaint served only to increase Knave's zest for destruction.
He hurled the bird to the floor, pinned it down with his feet and at one jerk tore the right wing from the body. Coughing out the mouthful of dusty pinions, he dug his teeth into the eagle's throat. Again bracing himself with his forelegs on the carcass, he gave a sharp tug. Head and neck came away in his mouth. And then before he could drop the mouthful and return to the work of demolition, he heard the Master's step. ”

“ That’s at the Standishes’. An’ they’ve got mumps, there. Besides, I kind of thought I’d wait until some of this noospaper talk quieted down before I went anywheres. That’s—that’s why I didn’t come here, either,” he went on, shamefacedly.
“I knew it!” she declared. “I knew that was it. I wondered if you could be so utterly silly. So I waited. And it seems you could. Aren’t you ashamed? It would have served you right if I hadn’t sent for you at all. Why didn’t you come, Caleb? You surely don’t suppose all that newspaper nonsense made any difference to me, do you? ”

“ She looked out through the shutters at the harness bull stationed by a reform-for-revenue-only police captain outside her door. She looked at the list of bad debts, the piled-up tradesmen duns, and the higher pile of counterfeit yellows. And she wished for once in her life that she was still respectable; so she could cry on some woman friend's divan, tell her pastor her troubles, and then be snappy to her husband and maybe discharge the cook.
But what could she do? She had no woman friend left—of the sort one cries to. Her husband was still farther away. ”

“ Out of this copse, chewing greedily at an uprooted bunch of canna-bulbs, slouched Romaine's wandering sow. At, sight of the Mistress, she paused in her leisurely progress and, with the bunch of bulbs still hanging from one corner of her shark-mouth, stood blinking truculently at the astonished woman.
Now, Lad had not obeyed the Mistress's soft chirp. It had not reached his dulling ears;—the ears which, of old, had caught her faintest whisper. Yet, he would have followed her, as ever, without such summons, had not his nostrils suddenly become aware of an alien scent. ”

“ Your ‘treasure’ is the harness thief Lad treed the day you came to see me. So—”
“Nonsense!” fumed Glure. “Why, how absurd! He—”
“I hadn’t stolen nothing!” blubbered the man. “I was coming cross-lots to a stable to ask for work. And the brute went for me. I had to run up a tree and—”
“And it didn’t occur to you to shout for help?” sweetly urged the Master. “I was within call. So was Mr. Glure. So was at least one of my men. An honest seeker for work needn’t have been afraid to halloo. A thief would have been afraid to. ”

“ Terhune's tone fell again to a monotone.
"My first word is: 'Creveling.'"
"Suicide," responded Waverly doggedly after a moment's deliberation. He glanced covertly at Cutter and wet his thick lips with the tip of his tongue. ”

“ The hard luck an’ starvin’ has turned him old and ugly an’ bad-shaped. In short, he’s what S’ciety an’ a lovin’ Paternal Gov’ment has made him. An’—he’s my father, God help him! An’ the man who says I’m ashamed of him, lies!”
Amid the oppressed silence, Caleb Conover crossed over to where his father stood cowed and half-sobered. As gently as a woman, he put his arm about the old man’s twisted shoulders and drew him toward the door. A lane was made for their passage. From somewhere in the crowd came the sound of a woman’s stifled sob. Jack Hawarden impulsively clapped his hands together. ”

“ Amidst all this excitement, and amidst all the unruly fighters, Telramund, strongest, fiercest, most unruly of them all, has to open the drama; and to command our respect, to make us feel that it is he who is making the drama move, that it is because all the barbarians are afraid of him that the drama begins to move at all, he cannot possibly look too ferocious and hot-blooded, too strong of limb and tempestuous of temper. ”

“ How oft has its vehemence been found worse than the causes which led to it!—inasmuch as nothing undertaken with impatience can be effected without impetuosity: nothing done with impetuosity fails either to stumble, or else to fall altogether, or else to vanish headlong. Moreover, if you avenge yourself too slightly, you will be mad; if too amply, you will have to bear the burden. [13] What have I to do with vengeance, the measure of which, through impatience of pain, I am unable to regulate? ”

“ But, out of the jumble of cries and stamping feet and explosive shouts from the scared onlookers on the veranda above, one staccato yell pierced the swirl of rage-mists in the avenging collie's brain.
"LAD!" came the Master's sharp, scandalized mandate. "LAD!!!"
Hating the thought of desisting from his cherished revenge, the dog heard and heeded. With visible reluctance, he drew back from the slaughter; and turned his noble head to face the man who was running down the steps toward him. ”

“ If I hadn’t had the rare good luck to be able to prove he was innocent—”
“Oh, it’s all right, Clive,” said Vail, pitying his friend’s utter demoralization. “You meant all right. I—”
“It’s all wrong,” denied Creede brokenly. “I’ve harmed the best friend I have in the world. The fact that I was trying to help doesn’t make any difference. If you don’t mind, I’ll follow the sweet Moselys’ example—pack up and go home.”
“Nonsense!” scoffed Vail. “No harm’s done. Stay on here. You meant all right—”
“Hell is paved with the skulls of people who ‘meant all right,’” interpolated Miss Gregg, severely. ”

“ Lad's sense of smell, like his hearing, was far less keen than once it had been. But, it was still strong enough to register the trace of intruders. His hackles bristled. Up went the classically splendid head, to sniff the light breeze, for further information as to the reek of pig and the lighter but more disquieting scent of man.
Turning his head, to reinforce with his near-sighted eyes the failing evidence of his nostrils, he saw the sow emerge from the canna-clump. He saw, too—or he divined—the look in her pale little red-rimmed eyes; as they glared defiantly at the Mistress. ”

“ One man only has refused. By an odd coincidence, that happens also to be the one man who was not robbed. Figure it out for yourself. It—”
“Oz Creede!” Miss Gregg declaimed, as the rest still sat dazed into momentary stillness at the unbelievable attack. “If you had the remotest idea how utterly vile and worthless you are, you’d bite yourself and die of hydrophobia.... I just thought I’d mention it,” she added, apologetically, to Doris.
But Doris did not hear. The girl’s glowing eyes were on Thaxton Vail, who had sprung to his feet and was advancing on his accuser. ”

“ An’ no man but me should ever come within a hundred miles of you. Then there’d be no danger of your runnin’ off an’ gettin’ married to some geezer who’d teach you to think I was the sort of man that ought to be fed in the kitchen an’ never ’lowed in the parlor. Oh, I know.”
The girl was looking at him with big, inscrutable eyes, as he halted half-ashamed of his own words.
“I think,” she said slowly, after a little pause, “I think you must have inherited a great, great deal of ignorance, Caleb. For during the years while you were a baby, you were too young to acquire very much of it. ”

“ Yet she repacked submissively—with the help of the khansamah, whom Terrington sent to the assistance of her pride—what she most needed in the space allowed her; with a new dull kindling of anger against the man who could compel her so easily to obey. ”

“ He has slept there every night since he was a puppy. The maid who dusts the downstairs rooms before breakfast lets him out, when she begins work. So he—”
“Bolster it up any way you like!” broke in Romaine. “He was out last night, all right. An’ early this morning, too.”
“How early?” questioned the Master.
“Five o’clock,” volunteered Schwartz, speaking up, from behind his employer. “I know, because that’s the time I get up. I went out, first thing, to open the barnyard gate and drive the sheep to the pasture. First thing I saw was that big dog growling over a sheep he’d just killed. ”

“ But his god was lying helpless at his feet and making queer sounds of distress. The dog's place was here. The joy of battle must be foregone.
Solicitously Chum leaned over Ferris and sought to lick the sufferer's face. As he did so his supersensitive nostrils were smitten by an odor which caused the collie to shrink back in visible disgust. The sickly, pungent smell of whisky on Ferris's labored breath nauseated Chum. He stood, head recoiled, looking down at Link in bewilderment. ”

“ Lad was between the irate Cyril and the Mistress. In babyish rage at the dog's placid presence in his path, he drew back one ungainly foot and kicked the astonished collie in the ribs.
At the outrage, Lad spun about, a growl in his throat. But he forbore to bite or even to show his teeth. The growl had been of indignant protest at such unheard-of treatment; not a menace. Then the dog stalked haughtily to his cave, and lay down there.
But the human witnesses to the scene were less forbearing;—being only humans. The Mistress cried out, in sharp protest at the little brute's action. ”

“ Caleb filled his lungs and shouted across the sea of mist. Again and again he bellowed forth his long-drawn halloo. To anyone on the nearer hilltop islands his call might readily have been heard. But human voice could as readily have penetrated a mountain of cotton-batting as carry sound through that waste of cloud-reek.
At length the two fugitives realized this. A last shout, a final straining of ears for some answering cry; then Conover turned again to the girl. ”

“ But mere cold could not quench Desirée’s pleasure in the simple escapade.
“We are runaway slaves!” she cried, her mood shifting from fairyland to a newer fantasy, “We are escaping from a fearsome Simon Legree named Conventionality! Conventionality is a wicked master who has whipped us and piled chains on us ever since we were born. And now we’ve put him to sleep in two tents and we’re running away from him. He’d be furious if he woke up. But he’s snoring very industriously. And he surely won’t wake,—in either tent—for at least an hour. ”

“ It was a dire threat to folk in a country where prosperity depends on pasturage. Scarce a man there but had at some time been so inquisitive as to climb Mount Hermon's slopes to stare at the wet, soggy snow that plastered the mountain's crest after each lowland rainfall. Scarce a man but remembered the barren deadness of the earth on Hermon's summit. The threat was pregnant.
"It is a lie!" sputtered the Welee. "The blessed Fathma——"
"Then prove it a lie!" ordered Kirby, taking another of the papers from his pocket and literally thrusting it into the Welee's clawlike hand. ”

“ When holdups find a man will fight—and can fight—they don't keep on slugging. They move out—if the street's as civilized as this one. No, son. These fellows were out to get you, not your cash or your ten-dollar watch and chain that you won at the raffle.”
“To kill me?” gasped Arthur, unbelieving.
“No; I guess not as bad as that. They'd 'a' used a knife or even taken a chance with a gun and an automobile skip if they'd wanted to kill you. ”

“ Bracing himself, and cursing his loved great-uncle’s eccentricity, and cursing a thousand times more vehemently the mischief-act of Osmun Creede, the unhappy householder walked up the veranda steps and confronted the two newcomers.
On the way he planned to carry off the situation with a high hand and to get rid of the couple as quickly as might be. Whistling to heel Macduff, the collie, who showed strong and hostile signs of seeking closer acquaintance with the fat police dog, he advanced on the couple.
“Good afternoon,” he said, briskly, as he bore down on the big man and the small woman. ”

“ I’d rather have you back in Ideala, learning the rule of three, than fighting because you like to have the boys trundle you around on their shoulders the way they did that day when we got back to the corps after that charge.
“It’s nice to be praised. No one but a hypocrite will say he doesn’t like it. But it isn’t the real thing to work for. ”

“ It was like him to array in battle-order all the contrary arguments of the case; that with the brute force of his domination he might batter them to pieces. And a long array they were.
First,—his own social yearnings, his golden dreams of a secure place within the inner charmed circle of Granite society! The only road of ingress had been through marriage with a daughter of that circle. ”

“ Horoson,” he said. “I’m through with them for the present. Only see none of them leave the house. Let them understand that any one who tries to sneak out will be followed and arrested. I shall take it as an indication of guilt. That is all, Mrs. Horoson. We shan’t need you or Vogel any more either. Or if we do I’ll ring for you.”
“Where is Clive?” Osmun asked Willis Chase, who had greeted the unpopular twin’s advent with the briefest of nods.
[116] “Gone up to bed,” answered Chase. “Went up as soon as the chief had finished asking him a handful of questions. Said he felt rotten. ”