“You're a licked, licked liar—and so's your Aunt Mariar,” says Freckles.
“I ain't got any Aunt Mariar,” says Stevie.
“You don't dast to have an Aunt Mariar,” says Freckles.
“I do dast,” says Stevie.
Then Tom put a chip on each of their shoulders, and pushed them at each other, and the chips fell off, and they went down behind the barn and had it out, and Freckles licked him. Which proves Freckles couldn't be stopped from writing that note if he wanted to, and he was still so mad that he wrote it right then and there back of the barn on a leaf torn out of a notebook Tom Mulligan owned, with his fountain pen, using his own nose bleed that Stevie had just drawed out of him; and he read out loud what he wrote. It was:
Dear Miss Little Eva: The rose is red, the violet's blue. Sugar is sweet and so are you. Yours truly. Mr. H. Watson. This is wrote in my own blood.
“Well, now, then,” says Stevie, “where's the coffin?”
“What do you mean, the coffin?” says Freckles.
“Last night,” says Stevie, “you was makin' a lot of brags, but this morning it looks like you didn't have the sand to act up to them.”
“If you think you've got size enough to make me lay down into a coffin with that note,” says Freckles, “you got another think cornin' to you. There ain't a kid my size, nor anywhere near my size, in this whole town can make me lay down into a coffin with that note. And if you think so, you just try it on!”