"Well!... She has done it now!" whispered Mrs. Greuze to the black-eyed lady who was acquainted with Sanballat and Nehemiah.
Mrs. Pennybacker noticed a peculiar look on the Senator's face, whether of amusement, embarrassment, or offence she could not tell, and was made dimly conscious by a glance at her companions that something was wrong, but she had thought of a story that she wanted to tell and was not to be suppressed.
"Why, Senator Southard, I actually heard a Judge in the Supreme Court of this District defend that atrocious law of Charles II by which a man has the right to will his children away from the mother, on the ground that women were likely to marry again! _Women_ likely to marry again! Will you think of that? I wanted to rise up in court and say to him what I said to a man who was trying to prove to me one day that more men died than women. 'Just look at the great number of widows on South Street,' he said, 'and compare them with the small number of widowers.' 'Heavens and earth!' I said, 'that isn't owing to any undue mortality among the men. It is because they won't remain widowers!'"
The Senator laughed a little constrainedly, saying that he guessed they couldn't deny the soft impeachment, but that their defense was in the attractiveness of the other sex. Mrs. Greuze put in a graceful word which had the effect to switch the conversation gently to another track without perceptible jar, and the conference was soon at an end.
Out in the corridor with the door of the committee-room safely closed, they gathered excitedly around Mrs. Pennybacker.
"Well! What is it? What have I done?" she demanded.
"Oh!" groaned Mrs. Greuze, "you've killed us _dead_! We'll never recover from this. Don't you know that is exactly what he did? Married a girl younger than his daughter--and in less than a year!"
"I ought not to have come," she said. "I told you I would be sure to say something! You ought not to have _let_ me come." Then her ever-present sense of humor came to her relief. "Well, there's one comfort. It was the truth! And he got it straight!"
While Mrs. Pennybacker was thus effectively wielding the battle-ax that common sense and observation had laid ready at her hand, Margaret, bleeding on the field, was well-nigh ready to give up the fight. An ambushed foe had fallen upon her and borne her down, and before she could recover herself, Courage, who had been through it all her strong support and chiefest counselor, had turned craven and fled.