"We want you to understand that your conduct in accompanying a lady that I shall not name to the city is an act we cannot pass in silence. Your conduct in going to Hopefield Manor was in itself an affront to us, but your behavior this morning passes all bounds. We have come, sir, to demand an explanation!"
At a glance this was a situation I dare not take seriously. In any circumstances the fact that these men had followed me to my office to rebuke me for accompanying Cecilia Hollister to town was absurd. This young Mr. Dick was absurd in himself. His gray cap had twisted itself oddly to the side of his head, and a bang of black hair lay at a piratical angle across his forehead. Behind him Ormsby, the knit-goods man, tugged at a brown moustache; Shallenberger's blue eyes snapped wrathfully.
"Mr. Dick," I said soberly, "I have heard of you as the original pragmatist of Nebraska, and as I am a mere ignorant chimney-doctor, to whom the later philosophical meaning of that term is only so much punk, I must identify you with that more obvious meaning of the word which is within my grasp. Mr. Dick, and gentlemen of the committee, you are meddlesome persons!"
"Meddlesome!" cried Dick, heatedly, and leaning toward me across my desk, "do I correctly understand, sir, that you mean to insult us?"
"Nothing could be further from my purpose. But I cannot permit you to imagine that I'm going to allow you to beard me in my office and criticise my conduct in regard to Miss Cecilia Hollister or anybody else. As a philosopher from the fertile corn-lands of Nebraska, I salute you with admiration; as a critic of my ways and manners, I show you the door!"
This I did a bit jauntily, and I had a feeling that I was playing my part well. But the young man before me seemed to swell with the rage that surged within him. He broke out furiously, beating the air with his fist.
"You not only insult this committee, but you speak with intentional disrespect of my native state, and of the great philosophical school of which I am a disciple. Am I right?"
"You are eminently right, Mr. Dick. Neither the corn, the philosophical schools, nor the packing-house statistics of your native Omaha interest me a particle. So far as I am personally concerned you may go back to your wigwam on the tawny Missouri as soon as you please."
"Then," he broke forth explosively, "then, sir, by Minerva's pale brow, and by all the gods at once, I brand you"—
"Put the brand on hot, little one! Make it a good strong curse while you're about it!"