"Don't swear, George," remonstrated the driver's better half.
"I'm not swearin'. Ain't I tellin' you what he said?"
The point was waived.
"And the lady's name was Hermione, was it? It's a pretty name."
"You haven't got it quite right. It was more like the way I said it."
And, indeed, the correction was justified, since it is a regrettable fact that the taxi-cab driver's wife made "Hermione" rhyme with "bone," and laid no stress on the second syllable. Strong in her superior knowledge, for she was an omnivorous reader of fiction—and Greek names were fashionable last November—she passed that point also.
"Well?" she demanded breathlessly.
"Ha, ha!" The narrator laughed joyfully. "The Dago Count went for Curtis as if he was on to a sure thing, but before you could say 'knife' he was on his back on the sidewalk. I've never seen a man put down so quick. I couldn't have floored him so beautifully if I'd hit him with a spanner. But that was only part of the entertainment. Curtis—mind you, before that I'd been treatin' him as an ordinary dude in evenin' dress—acted like an injarubber man filled with chain lightning. He shoved 'Valtaw' back into the auto, grabs the brake an' gear lever, an' puts 'em both out of action, sweeps the two girls into my cab, and——"
Here the taxi-driver bethought himself, and grinned vacuously.
"Well—an' here I am," he concluded.