“Hold on there!” exclaimed Peck, dropping his smile and his air of pleasantry. “Who’s calling names now?”
“They are names usually applied to a man who insults you and won’t give you satisfaction.”
“If you think I owe you satisfaction for our difference of opinion, you must owe me something for calling me a contemptible coward,” announced Duncan, in serious tones. “I’ll propose—” he hesitated, and approached a step nearer Shirley; “I’ll propose bowie-knives!”
Shirley recoiled. “I am not used to bowie-knives.”
“Nor I to swords and pistols,” said Duncan.
The fairness of this answer appealed to the man of honor. “Then we must find some other way,” he said. “Insults can only be wiped out with blood. We’ll play chess, and the one who’s beaten will commit suicide.”
At this proposition Duncan stared hard. For a moment he harbored the suspicion that Shirley was chaffing him, not he Shirley. But the boy’s solemn face and tragic manner immediately dispelled this illusion.
“I don’t play chess,” Duncan answered with plausible earnestness. “Let’s make it golf, and leave to the one who’s defeated the option of committing suicide or not. We can consider him dead anyway.”
“I don’t play golf.”
At this point Woods, seeing a chance to bring the deadly affair to a bloodless conclusion, interrupted with a shrewd proposal.