The separation had to be accomplished by violence, for Algernon's blood was up.
A crowd was not long in collecting, which caused a stoppage of vehicles of every description.
A gentleman leaned from an open carriage to look at the fray critically, and his companion stretching his neck to do likewise, “Sedgett!” burst from his lips involuntarily.
The pair of original disputants (for there were many by this time) turned their heads simultaneously toward the carriage.
“Will you come on?” Sedgett roared, but whether to Algernon, or to one of the gentlemen, or one of the crowd, was indefinite. None responding, he shook with ox-like wrath, pushed among shoulders, and plunged back to his seat, making the cabman above bound and sway, and the cab-horse to start and antic.
Greatly to the amazement of the spectators, the manifest gentleman (by comparison) who had recently been at a pummelling match with him, and bore the stains of it, hung his head, stepped on the cab, and suffered himself to be driven away.
“Sort of a 'man-and-wife' quarrel,” was the donkey's man's comment. “There's something as corks 'em up, and something uncorks 'em; but what that something is, I ain't, nor you ain't, man enough to inform the company.”
He rubbed his little donkey's nose affectionately.
“Any gentleman open to a bet I don't overtake that ere Hansom within three miles o' Ewell?” he asked, as he took the rein.
But his little donkey's quality was famous in the neighbourhood.