“’Fraid,” said “Smoky” concisely. “Youse city-ducks ain’t got the sand. I kin lick you with one-hand.”
“I don’t wish to have any trouble with you,” said Haywood. “I asked you a civil question; and you replied, like a—like a—a cad.”
“Wot’s a cad?” asked “Smoky.”
“A cad is a disagreeable person,” answered Haywood, “who lacks manners and doesn’t know his place. They sometimes play baseball.”
“I can tell you what a mollycoddle is,” said “Smoky.” “It’s a monkey dressed up by its mother and sent out to pick daisies on the lawn.”
“When you have the honour to refer to the members of my family,” said Haywood, with some dim ideas of a code in his mind, “you’d better leave the ladies out of your remarks.”
“Ho! ladies!” mocked the rude one. “I say ladies! I know what them rich women in the city does. They drink cocktails and swear and give parties to gorillas. The papers say so.”
Then Haywood knew that it must be. He took off his coat, folded it neatly and laid it on the roadside grass, placed his hat upon it and began to unknot his blue silk tie.
“Hadn’t yer better ring fer yer maid, Arabella?” taunted “Smoky.” “Wot yer going to do—go to bed?”
“I’m going to give you a good trouncing,” said the hero. He did not hesitate, although the enemy was far beneath him socially. He remembered that his father once thrashed a cabman, and the papers gave it two columns, first page. And the Toadies’ Magazine had a special article on Upper Cuts by the Upper Classes, and ran new pictures of the Van Plushvelt country seat, at Fishampton.