“Take your fist away!” snarled the professor, knocking the hand of the little man aside.
“Don’t yo’ strike at me, suh!” panted the major, his face red as a boiled lobster, and his gray mustache bristling.
“Strike at you!” retorted Zenas scornfully. “If I ever struck at you, you human wart, there wouldn’t be anything left of you but a grease spot!”
“Oh, please, please stop!” sobbed Sarah Ann, trying to get hold of them and force them apart.
“Yo’ had better hide behind a lady’s petticoat!” raged the man from Mississippi.
“Hide behind nothing!” retorted Gunn, giving Miss Ketchum an embrace and looking over one shoulder, while he reached over her other shoulder to again shake his fist at Fitts. “She is trying to keep me from annihilating you.”
Finding herself in the professor’s embrace, Miss Ketchum screamed and seemed on the point of fainting.
“Oh, Moses!” laughed Buckhart. “Look at that, pard—just look!”
“I see,” said Dick, also convulsed. “The professor isn’t losing the opportunity to hug Sarah Ann, and it makes the major bloodthirsty.”
Fitts danced round in an endeavor to get hold of Gunn, but the latter skillfully turned so that he kept Miss Ketchum’s limp form between them.