to stay
alone, I want something to divert me--I want my Flora!'" And the butler
mopped his forehead.

The bundle erected itself. "His '_wild_ Flora,' was what he said," Miss
Warfield corrected sharply; "he said he wanted to embrace--"

"Press," Wilkes corrected in turn.

She inflated with one drive of the piston. "If there's any difference,
_I_ don't know it!" came in a blow-out. And, dash me, if I believe she
_did_. She looked it, by Jove!

She faced the judge, who was leaning back against the table, looking
kind of punctured, don't you know. By Jove, it seemed to me he had grown
five years older in as many minutes!

This seemed to brighten her. "Wanted to _press_ his 'wild Flora'--his
very words!" her voice rasped.

My, but that woman looked vicious! She blew her nose, crossed her hands,
and propped herself on one foot with an air of ladylike resignation.

"I was so shocked you might have knocked me over with a feather, but I
managed to speak to him--I don't know how I ever did it!--and I said:
'You don't mean Flora, sir--_you_ can't treat Flora that way!' And if
you could have seen the way he flew to pieces! 'Why can't I?' he yelled
at me. 'Do you think I haven't done it before?' Exactly what he said and
I could hardly believe my ears; and then"--here she began to wabble and
the handkerchief came up--"then he--he called me a wo-woman!"

And, by Jove, she was off the road!

But it seemed to give the judge new interest in life! He just needed
some jolly thing, you know; and now he flared up sudden and went up in
the air like a freshly touched-off what's-its-name:

"A woman?" His cheeks blew out like little red balloons. "Well, dammit,
madam, what are you--_aren't_ you a woman?"--hands on hips he just
howled it at her--"what do you _think_ you are?"

For an instant she quailed before him like the stricken
what-you-call-it--but _only_ for an instant! Then her long neck coiled
back and her eyes glittered beady and snake-like; I heard a sort of
rattle in her throat, and then, of course, I knew she was going to
strike--and she did!

"Very good, Judge!" She sniffed it. "Still it's my duty to tell you--or
any one that asks me, for that matter--exactly what Mr. Jack said!" She
moistened her lips with the end of a red tongue, and clucked in a sad,
pitying sort of way. "Your son looked straight at me through the
door-crack and laughed in the most contemptuous way, and he said: 'You
just leave my Flora to me, wo