"I call him nothing."
"You had better not," said Ginger, who noticed that Pouncer was drawing in his horns a bit. "I can afford to take your lip, young Pouncer Rogers. I'm used to it an' you are no class, anyway, but if you call the Sailor here a liar, he'll have to put it acrost you. Won't you, Sailor boy?"
No reply from the Sailor.
"I call him nothing," said Pouncer, coming back a bit at this rather unexpected silence on the part of the Sailor. "But I simply says he pleadin' well didn't read no pleadin' letter from Dinkie Dawson, that's all I simply says."
"Young Pouncer," said Ginger, "you have called the Sailor a liar." He turned to his protégé with the anxious air of an extraordinarily polite Samaritan. "I'll hold your coat, Sailor boy. You've took too much already from the likes o' him. Give me your coat. You are bound to put it acrost him now."
Ginger looked around magisterially; the cognoscenti concurred as one. Already the Sailor's coat was in Ginger's hand. In the next moment he had rolled up the sleeves of the Sailor's blue jersey, remarking as he did so, "If ever I see a chap on his bended knees a-lookin' for trouble, it's this here young Pouncer. Sailor boy, if you'll be ruled by me, you won't half give him his gruel."
"It's more than you can, Ginger Jukes," said Pouncer, with ill-timed and unworthy defiance.
Ginger was aware of that fact. In the first place, fighting was not his long suit. He had too much intellect to love so vulgar a pastime merely for its own sake. Not only was it violent and dangerous, but it seldom meant anything in particular when you were through with it. All the same, it had its uses. Pouncer had been getting above himself for some little time now. If he didn't soon receive a proper licking from somebody, the hegemony of Cox's Piece might cease to be a sinecure.
"His left's fairly useful," whispered Ginger, as he brought his man up to the scratch. "But that's all he's got. Now mind you punch a hole right through him."
It was a rather disappointing scrap. But for this it would be unfair to blame either Pouncer or the Sailor. The fiasco was due to the unexpected, unwarranted, thoroughly ill-timed, and almost unprecedented behavior of the Metropolitan Police, who in the person of a certain Constable Y28 promptly moved on the combatants while they were sparring for position. He was obviously a young constable who had not quite shaken down into his duties.