"Do you mean to frighten us by boasting? We shall see what you can do when you come on the ground."
"Across a handkerchief: but on no other condition; and, unless you will accept that condition, I will assuredly, the next time I see you, be we where we may, treat you as I treated your friend Mr. Trebooze. I'll do it now! Get out of my shop, sir! What do you want here, interfering with my honest business?"
And, to the astonishment of Mr. Trebooze's second, Tom vaulted clean over the counter, and rushed at him open-mouthed.
Sacred be the honour of the gallant West country: but, "both being friends," as Aristotle has it, "it is a sacred duty to speak the truth." Mr. Creed vanished through the open door.
"I rid myself of the fellow jollily," said Tom to Frank that day, after telling him the whole story.
"And no credit to me. I saw from the minute he came in there was no fight in him."
"But suppose he had accepted—or suppose Trebooze accepts still?"
"There was my game—to frighten him. He'll take care Trebooze shan't fight, for he knows that he must fight next. He'll go home and patch the matter up, trust him. Meanwhile, the oaf had not even savoir faire enough to ask for my second. Lucky for me; for I don't know where to have found one, save the lieutenant; and though he would have gone out safe enough, it would have been a bore for the good old fellow."
"And," said Prank, utterly taken aback by Tom's business-like levity, "you would actually have stood to shoot, and be shot at, across a handkerchief?"
Tom stuck out his great chin, and looked at him with one of his quaint sidelong moues.