'He did deliver your message, Mrs. G.,' said the Captain, 'but neither the General, nor the Colonel, nor myself thought for a moment that you really meant to act on it.'
'Well, sir,' said Mrs. G., 'you find your mistake; it is a pity that three such great men should fall into the same error, but by your own account so it is.'
'Well, ma'am, I am sorry you put me into such a painful position, that I feel I have no alternative. I must report your disregard of authority, and whatever happens, you must remember you brought it upon yourself.'
'Thank you, sir, for your advice; but, really, unless the Colonel and yourself resolve to burn my house over my head and me in it, I don't see what is likely to happen. I am a British subject, sir, although an unprotected woman. You threaten to break open my doors, and to expose my property outside the house, to be spoiled by sun and rain and night-dews; try it, sir, and lay yourself and your gallant chief open to a civil action in the Supreme Court. There the judges, thank Heaven! care not two pins for your cantonment law. You cannot bring me, being a woman, to a court-martial for disobedience to orders; and I am advised, by those who do know something of law, that as I came here before your new rules were made, and besides hold a lease granted under cantonment law five years ago, you cannot legally turn me out. Go home, sir, and think of some cunning way by which, as gentlemen, and men of honour, you can show courtesy and respect to an unprotected lady, the widow of a brother officer; turn over in your generous minds how by violence and intimidation you can effect that which you cannot effect by law.'
Here Captain Pomposo, all but frantic, called out: 'Mrs. G.--Mrs. G., pray consider what you say, pray have----' But Mrs. G. refused to consider anything, or to hear anything; she shut down the window and pulled down the blinds. The 'immortal' had nothing for it but to ride to Colonel L.'s house and report the success of his undertaking.
When Colonel L. heard the result of Captain W.'s attempt to take possession of the bungalow, he was utterly confounded--I might say almost horror-struck. Resistance to military authority in a military cantonment had never, even in his dreams, assumed a tangible shape, or appeared even as a distant or possible contingency; and now he had to face it as a positive, undeniable reality. Actually in a cold perspiration he said, after pausing a minute or two: 'But what are we to do? I never met with such a case before, and never heard of such a case; the thing is so preposterous and unnatural, as well as unprecedented, that I am really at a loss. If it was a man I had to do with I should know what to do; but really, independent of the scandal and absurdity of the thing, to engage in a contest with an old woman, and to run the chance of getting the worst of it, places me in a position I never for a moment contemplated. I am fairly perplexed, and truly would rather again face "la Vieille Garde" with Ney at their head than face this dreadful Mrs. G. Great pity women were ever admitted into cantonments; they always give trouble and always cause trouble.'