straight to the chamber of my wife.

Without being deficient in moral courage, I am not a boisterous man. I
do not boast of an eye like Mars, to threaten and command, or glory in
producing a shudder with the creaking of my shoes. I mention this to
show that my manner, though rebuking, was not intended to be severe. To
awe by my authority, and soothe by my condescension, was the design; but
even in this limited effort I am conscious of a lamentable failure.

Seated upon the floor, within an airy castle of dry-goods, whose
battlements of flannel and linen cambric frowningly encircled her, was
Malinda Jane. Before it, like an investing army, with colors flying, and
a face radiant with defiant triumph, was Mrs. Mountchessington Lawk.
She had complacently opened the siege with the mixture of a hot
gin-toddy. My appearance upon this warlike scene was the signal for a
salute both loud and watery (in short, tearful), entered into with a
mutual heartiness by besieger and besieged. It was, moreover, rendered
impressive by a waving spoon, which Mrs. Mountchessington Lawk moved
solemnly backward and forward in a warning, funereal manner, as though
protesting against some appalling fate. That she was in possession of my
apartment, if not my house, I instinctively realized. She sat bolt
upright, firm and strong as a Hindoo idol on its altar; a nebulous glare
invested her head with a halo, through which bristling hair-pins stuck
out in all directions, like lightning-rods with fitfully luminous
points. The crystal wall of spectacles that bridged her nose seemed
graven with the cabalistic words, "I've got you." A feeling of conscious
guilt, of what an enfeebled mind failed to grasp, succumbed to the
shock.

From amid the joint chorus of sobs and tears which burst forth with the