“I’ll fix you! This’ll be the worst day’s work you ever did—trying to get smart with me!”
“Percival Pulcifer, will you kindly retain your rompers?” said Neighbor with eminent cheerfulness. “Now hark and heed! You did not ask me to sit down. You are not a nice old man. I do not like you much. Don’t you touch that bell!... I shall now sit down. Smoke? No? Well, I’ll roll one.”
Rolling one with tender care, Neighbor cocked a pleasant but rather impish eye on the seething financier and blithely prattled on:
“Allow me to say, Mr. Banker, that you are overlooking one point: You have a mortgage on my cattle, but you haven’t got any mortgage on me. Got that—clear?”
The banker gurgled, black faced and choking.
“I’ll ruin you! I’ll smash you!”
“Percival Pulcifer Peterkin Pool!”
For some reason, not at first easily apparent, these harmless words, which Jones syllabled with great firmness, made the banker writhe. He was wonted to hate—but ridicule was new to him and it hurt.
“You might at least show some respect for my gray hairs,” he interrupted indignantly.
“Oh, dye your gray hairs!” said Neighbor simply. “Damn your old gray hairs! Shoot, if you must, that old gray head! You’re an old gray-headed scoundrel—that’s what you are!”