“Me?” he said, with deadly mildness; “sure not. Can’t you see I’ve got a divin’ suit on? I’m goin’ up in a submarine balloon to catch butterflies with a two-inch auger.
“Excuse me,” said Haywood, with the insulting politeness of his caste, “for mistaking you for a gentleman. I might have known better.”
“How might you have known better if you thought I was one?” said “Smoky,” unconsciously a logician.
“By your appearance,” said Haywood. “No gentleman is dirty, ragged and a liar.”
“Smoky” hooted once like a ferry-boat, spat on his hand, got a firm grip on his baseball bat and then dropped it against the fence.
“Say,” said he, “I knows you. You’re the pup that belongs in that swell private summer sanitarium for city-guys over there. I seen you come out of the gate. You can’t bluff nobody because you’re rich. And because you got on swell clothes. Arabella! Yah!”
“Ragamuffin!” said Haywood.
“Smoky” picked up a fence-rail splinter and laid it on his shoulder.
“Dare you to knock it off,” he challenged.
“I wouldn’t soil my hands with you,” said the aristocrat.