“An’ what for no?”
“Because he’s more nor a match for ye.”
“I don’t know that Tonald. I’m as stout a man as he is, whatever.”
“Oo ay, so ye are, Shames; but ye’re no a match for him. He’s been to school among thae Englishers, an’ can use his fists, let me tell you.”
At this Dougall held up a clenched hand, hard and knuckly from honest toil, that was nearly as big as a small ham. Regarding it with much complacency he said, slowly:—
“An’ don’t you think, Tonald, that I could use my fist too?”
“Maybe you could, in a kind o’ way,” returned the other, also filling his pipe and sitting down; “but I’ll tell ye what Muster Lumley would do to you, Shames, if ye offered to fight him. He would dance round you like a cooper round a cask; then, first of all, he would flatten your nose—which is flat enough already, whatever—wi’ wan hand, an’ he’d drive in your stummick wi’ the other. Then he would give you one between the two eyes an’ raise a bridge there to make up for the wan he’d destroyed on your nose, an’ before you had time to sneeze he would put a rainbow under your left eye. Or ever you had time to wink he would put another under your right eye, and if that didn’t settle you he would give you a finishin’ dig in the ribs, Shames, trip up your heels, an’ lay you on the ground, where I make no doubt you would lie an’ meditate whether it wass worth while to rise up for more.”
“All that would be verra unpleasant, Tonald,” said Dougall, with a humorous glance from the corners of his small grey eyes, “but I duffer with ye in opeenion.”
“You would duffer in opeenion with the Apostle Paul if he wass here,” said the other, rising, as his pipe was by that time well alight, and resuming his work, “but we’ll better obey Muster Lumley’s orders than argufy about him.”
“I’ll agree with you there, Tonald, just to convince you that I don’t always duffer,” said the argumentative Highlander, rising to assist his not less argumentative friend.