But there is a _man_ in there, or one who passes for a man, that I think would look far more respectable if he'd come out and face the tornado.

She's easy to manage when you know how.

At least Mag and I find her so." Here Mr.Hamilton ashamed of himself and emboldened, perhaps, by Lenora's words, slipped back the bolt of the door, and walking out, confronted his wife.
"Shall I order pistols and coffee for two ?" asked Lenora, swinging herself entirely over the bannister, and dropping like a squirrel on the stair below.
"Is Polly going to stay in this house ?" asked Mrs.Hamilton.
"She is," was the reply.
"Then I leave to-night," said Mrs.Hamilton.
"Very well, you can go," returned the husband, growing stronger in himself each moment.
Mrs.Hamilton turned away to her own room, where she remained until supper time, when Lenora asked "If she had got her chest packed, and where they should direct their letters!" Neither Margaret nor her father could refrain from laughter.
Mrs.Hamilton, too, who had no notion of leaving the comfortable Homestead, and who thought this as good a time to veer round as any she would have, also joined in the laugh, saying, "What a child you are, Lenora!" Gradually the state of affairs at the homestead was noised throughout the village, and numerous were the little tea parties where none dared speak above a whisper to tell what they had heard, and where each and every one were bound to the most profound secrecy, for fear the reports might not be true.

At length, however, the story of the china closet got out, causing Sally Martin to spend one whole day in retailing the gossip from door to door.

Many, too, suddenly remembered certain suspicious things which they had seen in Mrs.Hamilton, who was unanimously voted to be a bad woman, and who, of course, began to be slighted.
The result of this was to increase the sourness of her disposition; and life at the Homestead would have been one continuous scene of turmoil had not Margaret wisely concluded to treat whatever her stepmother did with silent contempt.