While I was on my way back to the office I saw what looked like it was going to be a fight, so I stopped around to watch, but it turned out to be nothing but a squabble. It was kind of fun, though, even if nobody did anything but talk and holler. The men mixed up in it were Mr. Pawl, who owned the Emporium Grocery, and Mr. Giddings, who ran the Busy Big Market.
When I got there they were just beginning to get started good. Mr. Pawl, who was about five feet and a half tall, was reaching up in the air as far as he could reach to shake his fist under Mr. Giddings’s nose—and Mr. Giddings’s nose was so high up he couldn’t even come near it.
“You did,” says he, hollering as loud as he could yell. “You know you did, you—you yaller grasshopper. She come right over and told me. ’Tain’t the first time, neither. But it’s goin’ to be the last. No man kin say to Missis Petty that the eggs in my store was laid by a hen that was sufferin’ from ague. No, sir, nobody kin. Sufferin’ from ague, says you, so that the eggs was addled before they was laid, on account of the hen shakin’ and shiverin’ so.... That’s what you told her, you wab-blin’ old bean-pole. Tryin’ to drive away my customers, eh? I’ll show you.”
“Now, Banty,” says Mr. Giddings, calling Mr. Pawl a name that always made him mad enough to eat a barrel of nails, because he didn’t like to have folks mention his size, “now, Banty, jest keep your feet on the ground. ’Tain’t a mite worse for me to tell Missis Petty what I told her than it is for you to tell Missis Green that whenever you grease up your buggy you git a pound of my butter ’cause it’s better for the purpose than the best axle grease—but hain’t good for nothin’ else. Remember that, don’t you, you half-grown toadstool? ... Jest let me tell you, this here slanderin’ ’s been goin’ on long enough, and I’m a-goin’ to fight back. I’ll give you tit for tat, and don’t you forgit it.”
“I’ll have the law on you,” Mr. Pawl hollered.
“Law—shucks! I’ll take you acrost my knee and spank you,” says Giddings.
“I won’t muss up my hands touchin’ you,” says Pawl. “’Twouldn’t hurt you nohow, with your rhinoceros hide. Only way to git you sufferin’ is to touch your pocket-book. From now I’m a-goin’ after your business, and goin’ after it hard. I’ll bust you, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll bust you so’s you can’t be put together with glue.”
“Two kin play that fiddle,” says Mr. Giddings. “In two months there won’t be but one grocery store in Wicksville, and that one’ll be Giddings’s Busy Big Market. Now run along and sleep on that.”
Giddings walked off, leaving Pawl dancing up and down and making noises that didn’t have any sense to them. He was so mad he didn’t know if he was a man in Wicksville or a rampaging hyena in the Desert of Sahara.
I poked along to the office with my little ad. and handed it to Mark, sort of figgerin’ maybe he’d be mad because I hadn’t got more, but he wasn’t, and I might have known he wouldn’t be.