While he was reading the bell rang. Mrs. Bantam came in. “It’s them Gaunts,” she whispered. The Gaunt family had not been near him for months, and now they had come to pluck the certain fruit of the I Say articles. They stood in a defiant cluster in the tiny hall. John, for once, fortified and embittered by the exasperations of the Underground, allowed himself to be violently angry. He took a stick from the rack and shouted at them, “Get out of my house⁠—or I’ll⁠—I’ll throw you out!” A little to his surprise they did go out, and he went back to “The Death in the Wood,” pleasantly relieved by his self-assertion and anger.