“This is what’s happened to him,” retorted the lady. She drew from her muff a copy of our last week’s issue, with my article on hydrogen gas scored in pencil, and flung it before his eyes. Our chief took it and read it through.
“He was ‘Balloonist’?” queried the chief.
“He was ‘Balloonist,’” admitted the lady, “the poor innocent child, and now look at him!”
“Maybe it’ll grow again,” suggested our chief.
“Maybe it will,” retorted the lady, her key continuing to rise, “and maybe it won’t. What I want to know is what you are going to do for him.”
Our chief suggested a hair wash. I thought at first she was going to fly at him; but for the moment she confined herself to words. It appears she was not thinking of a hair wash, but of compensation. She also made observations on the general character of our paper, its utility, its claim to public support, the sense and wisdom of its contributors.
“I really don’t see that it is our fault,” urged the chief—he was a mild-mannered man; “he asked for information, and he got it.”
“Don’t you try to be funny about it,” said the lady (he had not meant to be funny, I am sure; levity was not his failing) “or you’ll get something that you haven’t asked for. Why, for two pins,” said the lady, with a suddenness that sent us both flying like scuttled chickens behind our respective chairs, “I’d come round and make your head like it!” I take it, she meant like the boy’s. She also added observations upon our chief’s personal appearance, that were distinctly in bad taste. She was not a nice woman by any means.
Myself, I am of opinion that had she brought the action she threatened, she would have had no case; but our chief was a man who had had experience of the law, and his principle was always to avoid it. I have heard him say:
“If a man stopped me in the street and demanded of me my watch, I should refuse to give it to him. If he threatened to take it by force, I feel I should, though not a fighting man, do my best to protect it. If, on the other hand, he should assert his intention of trying to obtain it by means of an action in any court of law, I should take it out of my pocket and hand it to him, and think I had got off cheaply.”