but she don't show to her best
advantage when she blubbers. I stood there looking at her and I couldn't
think of nothing but that old adage that runs: 'Hell is nothing to put
alongside of a woman that has been laughed at.' 'Pearl,' I says, 'you've
done it now. You can't tell me you haven't made an enemy of that woman.'
And Pearl says to me, 'That great baby! I guess she'll survive.' 'Well,'
I says, 'the fat's in the fire.' And Pearl says to me, ''T won't hurt
her if she does lose a little flesh over it.' I don't know why it is
these women can't live together in peace without kicking up such a touse
all the time over trifles."

Elmer was not free on the occasion itself to spend himself in narrative,
however. His wife kept him close by her after her triumph. In grim
silence she preceded him up the outside staircase, threw open the door
to the house of Higgins and marched in. She commanded him to fetch a hod
of coal. She rattled her irons, touched her finger to the bottom of a
hot one--tszt--and brought it down on the ironing board with a masterful
jounce. And then she glared out of the window at the massive stern of
the _Minnie Williams_.

"I guess she'll know better another time," she said grimly.

"Ain't you two women been at swords' points long enough?" pleaded Elmer.

"If she thinks she can walk all over me she'll find she's mightily
mistaken."

"All is, I mistrust she won't leave a stone unturned," Elmer said,
scratching his ear. He was deep in the study of navigation again. "Hat's
contrary; yes, she is; she's mulish when she's crossed. And I don't know
when I've seen her get her back up the way she did to-day."

He spoke as briefly as possible on the subject, however. Good navigation
began at home; and there were shallows there that would put to shame the
terrors of Pollock Rip Slue. As he was going to bed near the hour of
midnight he did just say that he would rather not have Hat Tyler for an
enemy.

"There's no telling when she may bob up and put a spoke in your wheel,"
he said, taking off his necktie.

"You see to it that you put on a clean collar in the morning," said
Pearl Higgins from the bed. "The one you've got on's filthy dirty."

"I wish you could see it in a little different light Pearl," said her
spouse. "It ain't as if Hat Tyler was the fiend incarnate. But she'll
naturally hanker to get back at you; and with me away and all----"

"I can take care of myself, thank you," said Pearl.

"Still