“I told him this was my paper, and so long as it was mine, I should do exactly what I wanted with it, and then I turned my back and walked away leaving him looking like a dressed-up mushroom—a fatuous mushroom.”
“A new variety,” said Pell.
“I—I’ll make his life miserable for sixty days anyhow.”
“If,” said Pell, “he permits you to continue for sixty days.”
“I’ll continue, not for sixty days, but for years and years and years—till I’m an old, gray-headed woman—just to spite him. I’ll make this paper pay! I’ll show him he can’t threaten me. I’ll——”
“Now, Lady,” said Tubal, “if I was you I’d set down and cool off. If you’re spoilin’ fer a fight you better go into it level-headed and not jest jump in flailin’ your arms like a Frenchy cook in a tantrum. Abner Fownes hain’t no infant to be spanked and put to bed. If you calc’late to go after his scalp, you better find out how you kin git a grip onto his hair.”
“And,” said Pell, “how you can prevent his—er—getting a grip on yours.”
“I don’t believe he’s as big a man as he thinks he is,” said Carmel.
“I have read somewhere—I do not recall the author at the moment—a word of advice which might apply to this situation. It is to the effect that one should never underestimate an antagonist.”
“Oh, I shan’t. I’ll cool down presently, and then I’ll be as cold-blooded and calculating as anybody. But right now I—I want to—stamp on his pudgy toes.”