. Now, I'll get it outa you two if I have to
shoot it out."

Lance, just returned from Berkeley during Easter holidays, lifted one
eyebrow at Tom, lowered one lid very slowly, and gave his mother a
level, sidelong glance.

"Your husband, my dear madame, has been engaged in a melodramatic role
created by himself. He is painfully undecided whether the hisses of
the orchestra attest his success as a villian; whether the whistling
up in the gallery demands an encore, or heralds an offering of
cabbages and ripe poultry fruit. I myself did not witness the
production, but I did chance to meet the star just as he was leaving
the stage. To me he confided the fact that he does not know whether it
was a one-act farce he put on, or a five-act tragedy played
accidentally hind-side before, with the villian-still-pursuing-her act
set first instead of fourth. I am but slightly versed in the drama as
played in the Black Rim the past two years. Perhaps if the star would
repeat his lines--"

"For-the-Lord-sake, Lance! As a dramatic critic you're the punkest
proposition I ever slammed my door against. Talk the way you were
brought up to talk and tell me the truth. What did Tom do, and how did
he do it?"

Lance drew his black eyebrows together, studying carefully the ethics
of the case. "Belle, you must remember that Dad is my father. Dad
must remember that you are my mother--technically speaking. By heck,
if it wasn't for remembering how you used to chase me up on the barn
every day or so with your quirt, I'd swear that you grew up with me
and are at this present moment at least two years younger than I am.
However, they _say_ you are my mother. And--do you want to know,
honestly, what dad has been doing?"

"I'm _going_ to know," Belle informed him trenchantly.

"Then let me tell you. I'll break it gently. Tom, your husband, the
self-confessed father of your offspring, to-day rode to an alleged
schoolhouse, threatened, ordered, and by other felonious devices hazed
three Swedes and the four Boyle kids out of the place and toward their
several homes and then when the schoolmarm very discreetly locked the
door and mildly informed him that she would brain him with a twig off
a sage-bush if he burst the lock, he straightway forgot that he was
old enough to have a son quite old enough to frighten, abduct and
otherwise lighten the monotonous life of said schoolmarm, and became a
bold, bad man. He bursted that door off its hinges--"

"Yo