“On the contrary, I was much interested in everything pertaining to your too brief visit,” I returned; “I am even more so now.”
“Well, m’friend”—he shot me a sidelong, distrustful glance—“keep yer eyes open.”
“That is just the point!” I laughed, with intentional significance, for I meant to make Mr. Percy talk as much as I could. To this end, remembering that specimens of his kind are most indiscreet when carefully enraged, I added, simulating his own manner:
“Eyes open—and doors locked! What?”
At this I heard a gasp of astonishment from Miss Elliott, who must have been puzzled indeed; but I was intent upon the other. He proved perfectly capable of being insulted.
“I guess they ain’t much need o’ lockin’ YOUR door,” he retorted darkly; “not from what I saw when I was in your studio!” He should have stopped there, for the hit was palpable and justified; but in his resentment he overdid it. “You needn’t be scared of anybody’s cartin’ off THEM pitchers, young feller! WHOOSH! An’ f’m the luks of the CLO’ES I saw hangin’ on the wall,” he continued, growing more nettled as I smiled cheerfully upon him, “I don’ b’lieve you gut any worries comin’ about THEM, neither!”
“I suppose our tastes are different,” I said, letting my smile broaden. “There might be protection in that.”
His stare at me was protracted to an unseemly length before the sting of this remark reached him; it penetrated finally, however, and in his sharp change of posture there was a lightning flicker of the experienced boxer; but he checked the impulse, and took up the task of obliterating me in another way.
“As I tell the little dame here,” he said, pitching his voice higher and affecting the plaintive, “I make no passes at a friend o’ her—not in front o’ her, anyways. But when it comes to these here ole, ancient curiosities”—he cackled again, loudly—“well, I guess them clo’es I see, that day, kin hand it out t’ anything they got in the museums! 'Look here,’ I says to the waiter, ‘THESE must be’n left over f’m ole Jeanne d’Arc herself,’ I says. ‘Talk about yer relics,’ I says. Whoosh! I’d like t’ died!” He laughed violently, and concluded by turning upon me with a contemptuous flourish of his stick. “You think I d’know what makes YOU so raw?”
The form of repartee necessary to augment his ill humour was, of course, a matter of simple mechanism for one who had not entirely forgotten his student days in the Quarter; and I delivered it airily, though I shivered inwardly that Miss Elliott should hear.