stepped into the
road to speak to her.

"I was going to see you," she said. "Get in here."

Jeff got in and disposed his length as best he might in the cramped
interior, redolent now of varied scents, all delicate but mingled to a
suffocating potency.

"Tell him to drive along outside the town," she bade. "Were you going to
see me?"

"No," said Jeffrey, after executing her order. "I've told you I can't go
to see you."

"Because Esther made that row? absurd! It's Susan's house."

"I'm not likely to go into it," said Jeff drily, "unless I am
summoned."

"She's a fool."

"But I don't mind telling you where I was going," said Jeff. "I was
going to lick Weedon Moore--or the equivalent."

"Not on account of my interview?" said Madame Beattie, laughing very far
down in her anatomy. Her deep laugh, Jeff always felt, could only have
been attained by adequate support in the diaphragm. "Bless you, dear
boy, you needn't blame him. I went to him. Went to his office. Blame
me."

"Oh, I blame you all right," said Jeff, "but you're not a responsible
person. A chap that owns a paper is."

"I wish you'd met him," she said, in great enjoyment. "Where'd he go,
Jeffrey? Can't we find him now?"

"I suspect he went to the old circus-ground. I caught him there talking
to Poles and Finns and Italians and Greeks, telling them the country was
no good and they owned it."

"Why, the fellow can't speak to them." Madame Beattie, being a fluent
linguist, had natural scorn of a tubby little New Englander who said
"ma'am ".

"Oh, he had an interpreter."

"We'll drive along there," said Madame Beattie. "You tell Denny. I
should dearly like to see them. Poles, do you say? I didn't know there
were such people in town."

Jeffrey, rather curious himself, told Denny, and they bowled cumbrously
along. He felt in a way obliged to proffer a word or two about the
interview.

"What the devil made you do it anyway?" he asked her; but Madame Beattie
chuckled and would not answer.

XXI

All the way along, in the warm twilight, Madame Beattie was gay over the
prospect of being fought for. With the utmost precision and unflagging
spirit she arranged a plausible cause for combat, and Jeffrey, not in
the least intending to play his allotted part, yet enjoyed the moment
fully.

"You shall do it," Madame Beattie assured him, as if she permitted him
to enter upon a task for which there was wide competition. "You shall
thrash him, and h