“Cripple? That’s a boy without feet or hands. I seed one once at the Museum in Munich. My! but he wasn’t like you. He had a voice. Cracky! how that crippler did sing! You cripple, can you sing, too, as well as holler?”
“Clear out, I tell you! You infernal little imp!”
“Ain’t a imp. Imps goes down traps and holes in theatres. I’ve seen ’em. Ginger! ain’t you a cross-looking boy?”
The child had come fearlessly forward, and was bestowing upon the invalid a critical scrutiny, which naturally made its sensitive recipient writhe.
“Clear out, quick! or I’ll throw this book at your head!”
“You dassent!”
For answer the volume of Dickens with which Melville had been passing away his tedious afternoon, whizzed past the intruder’s curly pate.
In an instant all his fiery temper had roused. The child was used only to kindness and indulgence; his few “fights” had been with poor children on the city street in that distant home in Germany, and he had never attempted one with “an equal.” His little chest swelled, his head tossed back, his voice took on a new tone. “You coward, you! If I had Fritzy Nunky’s Winchester here, I’d blow your head right square off you! You—you—mean thing!”
“Will you go?”
“No!”