"I'll tell my big brother o' you, Drabble. He can fecht ten polissmen, and he could dicht the street wi' your brither, and throw him ower a lamp-post to dry."
Cleg and the Drabble felt that they must do something for the honour of their respective houses, for this sort of family pride is a noble thing and much practised in genealogies.
So, pausing every ten yards to state what their several big brothers would do, and with the fellest intentions as to future breaches of the peace, the combatants parted. The afternoon air bore to the Drabble from the next street—
"You—let—the Kavannahs—alane frae this oot—or it'll be the waur for you!"
The Drabble rubbed his nose on his sleeve, and thought that on the whole it might be so.
Then he took out three papers which he had secreted up his sleeve, and went joyfully and sold them. The Drabble was a boy of resource. Cleg had to come good for these papers to Mistress Roy, and also bear her tongue for having lost them. She stopped them out of his wages. Then Cleg's language became as bad as that of an angry Sunday school superintendent. The wise men say that the Scots dialect is only Early English. Cleg's was that kind, but debased by an admixture of Later Decorated.
He merely stated what he meant to do to the Drabble when he met him again. But the statement entered so much into unnecessary detail that there is no need to record it fully.