"Simple fact. Are you not about twenty-three years old?"
"What is that to you, sir?"
"No business of mine, of course. You may be growing into your second childhood for aught I care: but if, as I guess, you are about twenty-three, I, as I know, am thirty-six: then I fought my first duel when you were five years old, and my tenth, I should say, when you were fifteen; at which time, I suppose, you were not ashamed either of the jacket or the blackberries."
"You will find me a man now, sir, at all events," said Creed, justly wroth at what was, after all, a sophism; for if a man is not a man at twenty, he never will be one.
"Tant mieux. You know, I suppose, that as the challenged, I have the choice of weapons?"
"Of course, sir," said Creed, in an off-hand generous tone, because he did not very clearly know.
"Then, sir, I always fight across a handkerchief. You will tell Mr. Trebooze so; he is, I really believe, a brave man, and will accept the terms. You will tell yourself the same, whether you be a brave man or not."
The youth lost the last words in those which went before them. He was no coward: would have stood up to be shot at, at fifteen paces, like any one else; but the deliberate butchery of fighting across a handkerchief—
"Do I understand you, sir?"
"That depends on whether you are clever enough, or not, to comprehend your native tongue. Across a handkerchief, I say, do you hear that?" And Tom rolled on at his pills.