"Now, Mr. Jedlick, I don't want you to go raisin' no fuss around here with the guests," she said.
"Jedlick!" repeated Taterleg, turning to Lambert with a pained, depressed look on his face. "It sounds like something you blow in to make a noise."
The barber's customer was a taller man standing than he was long lying. There wasn't much clearance between his head and the ceiling of the porch. He stood before Taterleg glowing, his hat off, his short-cut hair glistening with pomatum, showing his teeth like a vicious horse.
"You look like you was cut out with a can-opener," he sneered.
"Maybe I was, and I've got rough edges on me," Taterleg returned, looking up at him with calculative eye.
"Now, Mr. Jedlick"—a hand on his arm, but confident of the force of it, like a lady animal trainer in a cage of lions—"you come on over here and set down and leave that gentleman alone."
"If anybody but you'd 'a' said it, Alta, I'd 'a' told him he was a liar," Jedlick growled. He moved his foot to go with her, stopped, snarled at Taterleg again. "I used to roll 'em in flour and swaller 'em with the feathers on," said he.
"You're a terrible rough feller, ain't you?" Taterleg inquired with cutting sarcasm.
Alta led Jedlick off to his corner; Taterleg and Lambert entered the hotel office.
"Gee, but this is a windy night!" said the Duke, holding his hat on with both hands.