"Why, then, my covey, I'll knock ye off your pins again—prompt an' j'yful!"
"Under those circumstances I much prefer to remain as I am."
"Why, then you're a weevil—a worm, ah—an' what's more, a weevily worm at that, an' I spits on ye!"
Here, perceiving that he was about to put his heinous threat into execution, I arose.
"Enough!" quoth I, buttoning my coat. "Now let Olympus shake, the caverns of ocean roar, the round earth tremble! If you have fists, prepare to use them now—come on, pestiferous peasant, most contumacious clod, and 'damned be he that first cries Hold—enough'!"
"Well, drown'd me!" exclaimed the ostler, staring. "Drown'd me if I ever 'eard sich 'orrid talk in all my days, an' I've groomed for a earl—ah, an' a markis afore now!"
Having said which, he clenched his fists, squared his shoulders and launched himself at me like a charging bull. But profiting by Jessamy Todd's many lessons and painful instruction, I danced nimbly aside, tapped him with my left, spun round to meet his second rush, checked him with a flush hit, swung my right beneath his chin and next moment saw him sitting upon the cobblestones, legs wide-straddled, gaping about him with a vacant air.
"'Oly 'eavens!" he murmured, glancing from the cloudless sky to me and back again. "An' sich a whipper-snapper—'oly 'eavens!"
"A—weevily worm?" I enquired.
"Sir, I takes it back!" he answered, tenderly feeling his chin. "There ain't a weevil breathin', no, nor yet a worm as could ha' knocked me off my pins so neat an' true! I takes back weevil an' likewise worm, sir."