The colonel looked uneasy for a moment, while the captain, whose natural impudence was increased by his potations, put a bold face upon the matter, and eyed Tickner with lurking ferocity.
“And pray, sir, in what rig’ment had you the honour-r-r to ser-r-rve?” demanded the Irishman at length, with a menacing reverberation of the ominous r’s.
“Oh! in several,” returned the colonel, mixing his toddy without raising his eyes. “Might I ask the same question of you, captain?”
“Be Jasus! and ye may ask, sure enough, my frind,” exclaimed O’Blunderbuss: “but it would be more polite on your par-r-t if you was afther answering my quaries first;—and thin it’s meself that’ll give ye my whole pidigree from the beginning to the ind of that same.”
“I should beg to observe, sir,” said the colonel, stirring up his liquor, on which he still kept his eyes fixed, “that it would be more in accordance with the rules of military etiquette if you were to give the first explanations—seeing that I have the honour to hold a higher rank than yourself in her Majesty’s service.”
“And, be the holy poker-r!” ejaculated Captain O’Blunderbuss, flying into a passion: “that remains to be proved! There’s many a discharged cor-r-poral that dubs himself colonel, to my knowledge.”
“And there’s many a discharged cad to an omnibus that calls himself——”
But Colonel Tickner suddenly stopped short: for Captain O’Blunderbuss started from his seat, and, grasping the poker, exclaimed, “Be this holy insthrument, I shall be afther daling ye a gintle tap on the head, my frind, if ye dar-r to utther a wor-r-rd derogatory to my honour-r-r!”
Colonel Tickner stared in ghastly silence at the ferocious Irishman; and to add to the dismay of the former, Frank Curtis, who relished the proceeding hugely, whispered hastily in his ear, “For God’s sake, don’t provoke him! He’s the most terrible duellist in all London; he shot the Duke of Boulogne last year in Paris!”