“Why don’t you give Will Riley as good as he sends?” said Bob, wishing to get away from melancholy subjects. “You have got as good a tongue as his.”
“I haven’t his stock of bad words, though.”
“You’ve got a power of fun in you, though,—you keep everybody laughing when you want to, and if you’d only turn the pumps on him once, he’d howl like a yellow dog that’s had a quart o’ hot suds poured over him out of a neighbor’s window. Use your wits, like your father said. You’ve lived in the woods till you’re as shy as a flying-squirrel. All you’ve got to do is to talk up and take it rough and tumble, like the rest of the world. Riley can’t bear to be laughed at, and you can make him ridiculous as easy as not.”
The next day, at the noon recess, about the time that Jack had finished helping Bob Holliday to find some places on the map, there came up a little shower, and the boys took refuge in the school-house. They must have some amusement, so Riley began his old abuse.
“Well, greenhorn from the Wildcat, where’s the black sheep you stole that suit of clothes from?”
“I hear him bleat now,” said Jack,—“about the blackest sheep I have ever seen.”
“You’ve heard the truth for once, Riley,” said Bob Holliday.
Riley, who was as vain as a peacock, was very much mortified by the shout of applause with which this little retort of Jack’s was greeted. It was not a case in which he could call in King Pewee. The king, for his part, shut up his fists and looked silly, while Jack took courage to keep up the battle.
But Riley tried again.
“I say, Wildcat, you think you’re smart, but you’re a double-distilled idiot, and haven’t got brains enough to be sensible of your misery.”