"What th’ hang’s all this row about in here?" and flinging wide the kitchen door the Governor bounced in.
"He’s going to kill me, master, he is! he is!" And Mrs. Channing, her hair all down (though I can’t remember that it was ever all up), threw herself at his feet, sobbing, and embraced him round the knees. And old Harry certainly looked as if he was guilty, for there he stool in the centre of the floor with a huge American axe gripped firmly in both hands.
"Don’t believe her, boss; I weren't goin' to at all," he declared.
"Then what are you doing with that axe?" Never had we heard the Governor in such voice or seen him tremble as he did with rage.
"I was puttin" a edge on it, boss, so as to have it ready for th'? mornin' —old Harry lifted a file from the table and tapped the face of the axe with it— "and she wanted me to stop it 'cause it give her a headache, and when I wouldn't and she wouldn’t shut up talkin' I said I would chop her head off with it—that wer' all."
"Woman! Let go my legs and get up out of that," and the Governor had almost to kick himself free of Mrs. Channing. And though she relaxed her grip she remained kneeling and sobbing out fresh accusations against her husband. A heavy, slow moving man was Harry, of giant's figure, with a scraggy, faded whisker and a big stomach that filled his coloured shirt and hung over his waist strap like a large pudding in a bag.
"Now look here, Channing," and the Governor,
