and withdrew the rocking chair
It struck the lintel over the widow’s head, was shattered, and sent down upon her a shower of villainously smelling sparks.?Mrs. Mumpson shrieked and sought frantically to keep her calico wrapper from taking fire.?Meanwhile, Mrs. Wiggins rose and took a step or two that she might assist should there be any positive danger, for she had not yet reached a point of malignity which would lead her to witness calmly an auto-da-fe.?This was Jane’s opportunity.?Mrs. Wiggins had alienated this small and hitherto friendly power, and now, with a returning impulse of loyalty, it took sides with the weaker party.?The kitchen door was on a crack; the child pushed it noiselessly open, darted around behind the stove, and withdrew the rocking chair.
Mrs. Wiggins’ brief anxiety and preoccupation passed, and she stepped backward again to sit down.?She did sit down, but with such terrific force that the stove and nearly everything else in the room threatened to fall with her.?She sat helplessly for a bewildered moment, while Jane, with the chair, danced before her exclaiming, tauntingly, “That’s for chasing me out as if I was a cat!”
“Noo hi’ll chase ye both hout,” cried the ireful Wiggins, scrambling to her feet.?She made good her threat, for Holcroft, a moment later, saw mother and daughter, the latter carrying the chair, rushing from the front door, and Mrs. Wiggins, armed with a great wooden spoon, waddling after them, her objurgations mingling with Mrs. Mumpson’s shrieks and Jane’s shrill laughter.?The widow caught a glimpse of him standing in the barn door, and, as if borne by the wind, she flew toward him, crying, “He shall be my protector!”
He barely had time to whisk through a side door and close it after him.?The widow’s impetuous desire to pant out the story of her wrongs carried her into the midst of the barnyard, where she was speedily confronted by an unruly young heifer that could scarcely be blamed for hostility to such a wild-looking object.
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