“It annoys me the way you speak,” returned the elder brother, in growing irritation. “What right have you to call the one man’s discretion cowardice, and the other’s wise diplomacy? I don’t see that it was any more cowardice for Wone to protest against a riot, than for Romer to back down before public opinion as he seems now to have done. Besides, who can blame a fellow for wanting to avoid a scene like that? I know you wouldn’t have cared to encounter those Yeoborough roughs.”
“Old Romer encountered them,” retorted Luke. “They say he smoked a cigarette in their faces, and just waved them away, as if they were a cloud of gnats. I love a man who can do that sort of thing!”
“That’s right!” cried the elder brother growing thoroughly angry. “That’s the true Yellow Press attitude! Here we have one of your ‘still, strong men,’ afraid of no mob on earth! I know them—these strong men! It’s easy enough to be calm and strong when you have a banking-account like Romer’s, and all the police in the county on your side!”
“Brother Lickwit will not forget that afternoon,” remarked Luke, taking a rose from a vase on the table and putting it into his button-hole.
“Yes, Lickwit is the scape-goat,” rejoined the other. “Lickwit will have to leave the place, broken in his nerves, and ruined in his reputation, while his master gets universal praise for magnanimity and generosity! That is the ancient trick of these crafty oppressors.”
“Why do you use such grand words, Daddy Jim?” said Luke smiling and stretching out his legs. “It’s all nonsense, this talk about oppressors and oppressed. The world only contains two sorts of people—the capable ones and the incapable ones. I am all on the side of the capable ones!”
“I suppose that is why you are treating little Annie Bristow so abominably!” cried James, losing all command of his temper.
Luke made an indescribable grimace which converted his countenance in a moment from that of a gentle faun to that of an ugly Satyr.
“Ho! ho!” he exclaimed, “so we are on that tack are we? And please tell me, most virtuous moralist, why I am any worse in my attitude to Annie, than you in your attitude to Ninsy? It seems to me we are in the same box over these little jobs.”
“Damn you!” cried James Andersen, walking fiercely up to his brother and trembling with rage.