“Yes,” returned Woods. “It’s always for insults.”
“Will they fight?”
“Naw, the duels never come off—at least none has so far. They think it’s a great joke till he gets fierce as a pirate and asks ’em which they’ll take, swords or pistols. Then most of ’em try to sneak out of it. He told Lauter he’d shoot him anyway, and scared the life out of him.”
“Has he challenged you?”
“Naw, I let him alone.”
“What’s the matter with the fellow?”
“He was in school a long time in France and Switzerland; he got a lot of crazy ideas there about honor and insults and settling things by duels.”
“Can he really fence?” questioned Duncan.
“How should I know!” answered Fuzzy, indifferently.
Just then some one knocked and was yelled at to come in. It proved to be Shirley himself, a slender, well-groomed boy with an English accent, who had come to borrow a translation. On Woods’s invitation he stayed. Duncan fell to asking him questions about foreign schools and schoolboys. The two got on finely until Duncan wanted to know what kind of athletics they had in these foreign places, and Shirley confessed that there were no regular sports.