Mother's knees used to fold up this way, too. God bless
my soul!" wept the unfortunate lady. "I do wish I were dead."
With a desperate effort Aunt Agatha unfolded her knees sufficiently to
bear her weight and turning, screamed wildly. Hunch Dorrigan was
stealing catlike down the stairs, his bloated vicious face leering
threateningly at her over the railing.
"You old she-wolf!" roared that elegant young man. "Where's His Nibs?"
Aunt Agatha moistened her dry lips and, gurgling fearfully, fainted.
When at length she became conscious again. Hunch, glowering fiercely,
was returning from a futile chase. With a resentful flash of brutality
he towered suddenly above her and began to curse. Aunt Agatha,
bristling, sat up.
"Don't you dare speak to me like that after breathing vulgar liquor
fumes all over my niece's house and tying up that nice foreign
gentleman," she quavered weakly. "Don't you dare! I live in this
house, young man, and Carl will see to it that I'm protected. He
always has. He's very good to me."
Hunch glowered sullenly at her, fearful, in the face of her
relationship to Carl, of committing still another unforgivable offense.
"I once knew a stout young man with a glass eye," she gulped with
increasing courage, "and he was hanged by the neck until he was
dead--quite dead--and then they cut his body down and his relatives
took it away in a cart and on the way home it came to life--"
Aunt Agatha halted abruptly, vaguely conscious that this somewhat
felicitous ending to the tragedy, as an object lesson to Hunch, left
much to be desired.
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