Notwithstanding these danger signals, Jerry's arm encircled the plump waist of the lady in green, and, emboldened by the shades of twilight, his lips sought the identical spot under the white "fall veil" where her incendiary mouth might be supposed to lurk, quite "fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils." This done, he put on the brake and headed his horses toward the fence.
He was none too soon, for the Widder Bixby, broom in hand, darted out from the alders and approached the stage with objurgations which, had she rated them at their proper value, needed no supplement in the way of blows. Jerry gave one terror-stricken look, wound his reins round the whipstock, and, leaping from his seat, disappeared behind a convenient tree.
At this moment of blind rage Mrs. Todd would have preferred to chastise both her victims at once; but, being robbed of one by Jerry's cowardly flight, her weapon descended upon the other with double force.
There was no lack of courage here at least. Whether the lady in green was borne up by the consciousness of virtue, whether she was too proud to retreat, or whatever may have been her animating reason, the blow fell, yet she stood her ground and gave no answering shriek.
Enraged as much by her rival's cool resistance as by her own sense of injury, the Widder Bixby aimed full at the bonnet beneath which were the charms that had befuddled Jerry Todd's brain.
To blast the fatal beauty that had captivated her wedded husband was the Widder Bixby's idea, and the broom descended.
A shower of seeds and pulp, a copious spattering of pumpkin juice, and the lady in green fell resistlessly into her assailant's arms; her straw body, her wooden arms and pumpkin head, decorating the earth at her feet! Mrs. Todd stared helplessly at the wreck she had made, not altogether comprehending the ruse that had led to her discomfiture, but fully conscious that her empire was shaken to its foundations.
She glanced in every direction, and then hurling the hateful green-and-white livery into the stage, she gathered up all traces of the shameful fray, and sweeping them into her gingham apron ran into the house in a storm of tears and baffled rage.
Jerry stayed behind the tree for some minutes, and when the coast was clear he mounted the seat and drove to the store and the stable.
When he had put up his horses he went into the shed, took off his boots as usual, but, despite all his philosophy, broke into a cold sweat of terror as he crossed the kitchen threshold.
"I can't stand many more of these times when I put my foot down," he thought, "they're too weakening!"
But he need not have feared. There was a good supper under the mosquito netting on the table, and, most unusual luxury, a pot of hot tea.
Mrs. Todd had gone to bed and left him a pot of tea!
Which was the more eloquent apology!
Jerry never referred to the lady in green, then or afterwards; he was willing to let well enough alone; but whenever his spouse passed a certain line, which, being a Stover of Scarboro, she was likely to do about once in six months, he had only to summon his recreant courage and glance meaningly behind the kitchen door, where the birch broom hung on a nail. It was a simple remedy to outward appearances, but made his declining years more comfortable.
I can hardly believe that he ever took Pel Frost into his confidence, but Pel certainly was never more interesting to the loafers' bench than when he told the story of the eventful trip of the Midnight Cry and "the breaking in of the Widder Bixby."
