the last.

"There!" says his mother. "Now, Zenobia, will you send for an officer?"

Nope, Zenobia wouldn't; anyway, not until she had more facts to go on.
She don't deny that maybe I'm kind of a suspicious-lookin' character,
and says it ain't been explained what I was doin' in there holdin'
little Hadley on the rug; but she don't want to ring up the cops unless
it's a clear case.

"You know, my dear," she winds up with, "Hadley is quite apt to get into
trouble."

"Zenobia Preble!" snorts Sally, her eyes blazin'. "And he your own flesh
and blood! Come, precious, mother will take you home, and you shall
never, never come to this house again!"

"There, Sally," begins Zenobia, "don't fly into a----"

"When my husband's mother chooses to insult me in her own home," says
Sally, "I hope I have spirit enough to resent it!"

Say, she had that and some left over. Inside of two minutes she's
hustled little Hadley into his things, and out they sails to her
carriage, leavin' the makin's of a first-class fam'ly row all prepared.

In the meantime Zenobia is tyin' Aunt Martha loose, and I'm standin'
around waitin' to see what's goin' to happen to me next. Course, I
expects the third degree; but she begins with Martha.

"Now what mischief was Hadley up to this time?" she asks.

And Martha sticks to it that it was nothing at all. He merely found that
old plant-sprayer and discovered that by unscrewing the nozzle it made a
fine squirt gun. To be sure, she had asked him not to use the water from
the goldfish globe; but he just would. Also he'd insisted on locking all
the servants downstairs, and when she tried to amuse him in other ways
he'd tied her to the chair.

But it was just Hadley's innocent fun. He hadn't harmed anyone, even if
he did squirt a little water on the postman and a delivery boy. She had
not minded it herself, and no one had been rude to him until I'd come
chasing in and handled him so rough. That was an outrage, and Martha
thought I ought to get a life sentence for it.

"Humph!" says Zenobia, turnin' to me. "Now, young man, what have you got
to say?"

"Ah, what's the use?" says I. "You've got the whole story now. I'd do
the same again."

"Relying on the fact that your uncle is a police captain?" says she.

"Nah," says I. "That was hot air."

"There, Zenobia!" says Martha. "I told you he was a bad boy."

"Are you?" says Zenobia.

"Well," says I, "that all depends on how you size me up. I ain't in th