"Signore," said Buttons, "here are six piastres. I leave them on the table. You will get no more. If you give me any trouble I will summon you before the police for conspiracy against a traveller. You can't cheat me. You need not try."
So saying, he quietly placed the six piastres on the table, and advanced toward the door.
"Signore! Signore!" cried the landlord, and he put himself in his way. At a sign from Dolores the big dragoon came also, and put himself behind her.
"You shall not go," she cried. "You shall never pass through this door till you pay."
"Who is going to stop us?" said Buttons.
"My father, and this brave soldier who is armed," said Dolores, in a voice to which she tried to give a terrific emphasis.
"Then I beg leave to say this much," said Buttons; and he looked with blazing eyes full in the face of the "brave soldier." "I am not a 'brave soldier,' and I am not armed; but my friend and I have paid our bills, and we are going through that door. If you dare to lay so much as the weight of your finger on me I'll show you how a man can use his fists."
Now the Continentals have a great and a wholesome dread of the English fist, and consider the American the same flesh and blood. They believe that "le bogues" is a necessary, part of the education of the whole Anglo-Saxon race, careful parents among that people being intent upon three things for their children, to wit:
(1.) To eat _Rosbif_ and _Bifiek_, but especially the former.
(2.) To use certain profane expressions, by which the Continental can always tell the Anglo-Saxon.