"Where are you and her going at,--fishing?" she asked in a calmly
controlled voice that both of them had heard before, and which made us
quail in our boots and metaphorically duck our heads.

"Yes, we--er thought we would," he answered with an uncertainty of
voice and manner that bespoke abject fear.

"I'll be d---- if you shall," came the explosion, hot and loud. "I want
to go fishing with you, Polk, my own self, and she ain't no good for
nothing any way. You can't take her!"

"Henrietta!" I both beseeched and commanded in one breath.

"No, she ain't no good at all," was reiterated in the stormy young voice
as Henrietta caught hold of the nose of the panting Hupp and stood
directly in the path of destruction, if Polk had turned the driving
wheel a hair's breadth. "Uncle Peter says that she is er going to turn
the devil loose in Glendale, so they won't be no more whisky and no more
babies borned and men will get they noses rubbed in their plates, if
they don't eat the awful truck she is er going to teach the women to
cook for their husbands. An' the men won't marry no more then at all,
and I'll have to be a old maid like her."

Now, why did I write weeks ago that I would like to witness an encounter
between Jane and Henrietta! I didn't mean it, but I got it!

Without ruffling a hair or changing color Jane stepped out of the Hupp
and faced the foe. Henrietta is a tiny scrap of a woman, intense in a
wild, beautiful, almost hunted kind of way, and she is so thin that it
makes my heart ache. She is being fairly crushed with the beautiful
depending weight of her mother and the responsibility of the twins, and
somehow she is most pathetic. I made a motion to step between her and
Jane, but one look in Jane's face stopped me.

"Dear," she said, in her rich, throaty, strong voice as she looked
pleadingly at the militant midget facing her. Suddenly I was that
lonesome, homesick freshman by the waters of Lake Waban, with Jane's
awkward young arm around me, and I stood aside to let Henrietta come
into her heritage of Jane. "Don't you want to come with us?" was the
soft question that followed the commanding word of endearment.

"No!" was the short, but slightly mollified answer as Henrietta dug her
toes into the dust and began to look fascinated.

"I'm glad you don't want to come, because I've got some very important
business to ask you to attend to for me," answered Jane, in the brisk
tone of voice she uses in doing busi