"My cousin's honor cannot need vindication! It is unquestioned and unquestionable!"
"No smooth words, if you please, cousin John! Will you, or will you not fight that man?"
"Tut, Cap, no one really questions your honor—that man will get himself knocked into a cocked hat if he goes around talking of an honest girl!"
"A likely thing, when her own cousins and guests take it so quietly."
"What would you have them do, Cap? The longer an affair of this sort is agitated, the more offensive it becomes! Besides, chivalry is out of date! The knights-errant are all dead."
"The men are all dead! If any ever really lived!" cried Cap, in a fury. "Heaven knows I am inclined to believe them to have been a fabulous race like that of the mastodon or the centaur! I certainly never saw a creature that deserved the name of man! The very first of your race was the meanest fellow that ever was heard of—ate the stolen apple and when found out laid one half of the blame on his wife and the other on his Maker—'The woman whom thou gavest me' did so and so—pah! I don't wonder the Lord took a dislike to the race and sent a flood to sweep them all off the face of the earth! I will give you one more chance to retrieve your honor—in one word, now—will you fight that man?"
"My dear little cousin, I would do anything in reason to vindicate the assailed manhood of my whole sex, but really, now——"
"Will you fight that man? One word—yes, or no?"
"Tut, Cap! you are a very reckless young woman! You—it's your nature—you are an incorrigible madcap! You bewitch a poor wretch until he doesn't know his head from his heels—puts his feet into his hat and covers his scalp with his boots! You are a will-o'-the-wisp who lures a poor fellow on through woods, bogs and briars, until you land him in the quicksands! You whirl him around and around until he grows dizzy and delirious, and talks at random, and then you'd have him called out, you blood-thirsty little vixen! I tell you, Cousin Cap, if I were to take up all the quarrels your hoydenism might lead me into, I should have nothing else to do!"
"Then you won't fight!"