caused her; I doubt if I should have heard
anything except her voice just then--to start and exclaim:

"Someone is coming! Don't, dear, don't! Someone is coming."

It was the Crippses who were coming, of course. Mr. and Mrs. Cripps and
Hephzy. They would have come sooner, I learned afterwards, but Hephzy
had prevented it.

Solomon's red face was redder still when he saw us together. And Mrs.
Cripps' mouth looked more like "a crack in a plate" than ever.

"So!" she exclaimed. "Here's where you are! I thought as much. And
you--you brazen creature!"

I objected strongly to "brazen creature" as a term applied to my future
wife. I intended saying so, but Mr. Cripps got ahead of me.

"You get off my grounds," he blurted, waving his fist. "You get out of
'ere now or I'll 'ave you put off. Do you 'ear?"

I should have answered him as he deserved to be answered, but Frances
would not let me.

"Don't, Kent," she whispered. "Don't quarrel with him, please. He is
going, Mr. Cripps. We are going--now."

Mrs. Cripps fairly shrieked. "WE are going?" she repeated. "Do you mean
you are going with him?"

Hephzy joined in, but in a quite different tone.

"You are goin'?" she said, joyfully. "Oh, Frances, are you comin' with
us?"

It was my turn now and I rejoiced in the prospect. An entire brigade of
Crippses would not have daunted me then. I should have enjoyed defying
them all.

"Yes," said I, "she is coming with us, Hephzy. Mr. Cripps, will you be
good enough to stand out of the way? Come, Frances."

It is not worth while repeating what Mr. and Mrs. Cripps said. They said
a good deal, threatened all sorts of things, lawsuits among the rest.
Hephzy fired the last guns for our side.

"Yes, yes," she retorted, impatiently. "I know you're goin' to sue. Go
ahead and sue and prosecute yourselves to death, if you want to. The
lawyers'll get their fees out of you, and that's some comfort--though
I shouldn't wonder if THEY had to sue to get even that. And I tell you
this: If you don't send Little Frank's--Miss Morley's trunks to Mayberry
inside of two days we'll come and get 'em and we'll come with the
sheriff and the police."

Mrs. Cripps, standing by the gate, fell back upon her last line of
intrenchments, the line of piety.

"And to think," she declared, with upturned eyes, "that this is the 'oly
Sabbath! Never mind, Solomon. The Lord will punish 'em. I shall pray to
Him not to curse them too hard."

Hephzy's retort