"Wherefore all this noise?" he said, raising both his hands as he advanced slowly to the spot. "Mr. Jones, I implore you to desist!" But Mr. Jones was wedged down upon the counter, and could not desist.
"Madam, what can I do for you?" And he addressed himself to the back of Mrs. Marony, which was still convulsed violently by her efforts to pummel Mr. Jones.
"I believe he's well nigh killed her; I believe he has," said Miss Biles.
Then, at last, the discreet youth returned with three policemen, and the fight was at an end. That the victory was with Mrs. Morony nobody could doubt. She held in her hand all but the smallest fragment of the mantle,—the price of which, however, Miss Biles had been careful to repocket,—and showed no sign of exhaustion, whereas Jones was speechless. But, nevertheless, she was in tears, and appealed loudly to the police and to the crowd as to her wrongs.
"I'm fairly murthered with him, thin, so I am,—the baist, the villain, the swindhler. What am I to do at all, and my things all desthroyed? Look at this, thin!" and she held up the cause of war. "Did mortial man iver see the like of that? And I'm beaten black and blue wid him,—so I am." And then she sobbed violently.
"So you are, Mrs. Morony," said Miss Biles. "He to call himself a man indeed, and to go to strike a woman!"
"It's thrue for you, dear," continued Mrs. Morony. "Policemen, mind, I give him in charge. You're all witnesses, I give that man in charge."
Mr. Jones, also, was very eager to secure the intervention of the police,—much more so than was Mr. Brown, who was only anxious that everybody should retire. Mr. Jones could never be made to understand that he had in any way been wrong. "A firm needn't sell an article unless it pleases," he argued to the magistrate. "A firm is bound to make good its promises, sir," replied the gentleman in Worship Street. "And no respectable firm would for a moment hesitate to do so." And then he made some remarks of a very severe nature.
Mr. Brown did all that he could to prevent the affair from becoming public. He attempted to bribe Mrs. Morony by presenting her with the torn mantle; but she accepted the gift, and then preferred her complaint. He bribed the policemen, also; but, nevertheless, the matter got into the newspaper reports. The daily Jupiter, of course, took it up,—for what does it not take up in its solicitude for poor British human nature?—and tore Brown, Jones, and Robinson to pieces in a leading article. No punishment could be inflicted on the firm, for, as the magistrate said, no offence could be proved. The lady, also, had certainly been wrong to help herself. But the whole affair was damaging in the extreme to Magenta House, and gave a terrible check to that rapid trade which had already sprang up under the influence of an extended system of advertising.