What she meant I did not know, and I could scarcely inquire. Anyhow, it was not an agreeable thing to have said of one. The man in the row behind stood up, also, again thrusting his head between Mr Hammond and me, and actually forcing a scrap of paper into my hand.
“Pardon me once more, sir, but some of us have paid for our seats with the idea of witnessing the performance, which, I believe, still is going on.”
The impertinence of the man’s manner, and the absolute insolence of his behaviour to me, stung me to sudden fury. I can get into a rage if I like! I held out the piece of paper which he had just insinuated between my fingers.
“Mr Hammond, this person has just forced this into my hand, and a few minutes ago he dropped this down my neck.”
I extracted the three-cornered fragment, which still reposed where it had fallen, inside my bodice, offering it to Mr Hammond with the other. He took them both, opened one, glanced at it, then said, in a tone of inquiry:
“This the Johnny?”
“That is the man.”
I do not know what was on that scrap of paper. I have sometimes wondered; but I never did know, and I never shall. Whatever it was, I can scarcely conceive that it could have been an, in any way, adequate excuse for what Mr Hammond immediately did. Yet there was a workmanlike promptness about the fashion in which it was done which, in a sense, appealed to me. Though it must not be, for a moment, supposed that I regarded his action as anything but shocking.
He turned round, and he hit that insolent man in the centre of his face with such force that he knocked him over the back of his own stall right into the row behind. Whatever else it was, it was a magnificent hit.