At which Julian Wemyss snorted aloud and broke off the interview.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE DUKES ... AND SUPSORROW
Every good action has its fruit, though the doer of it but seldom plucks it in this world. Contrariwise the fruits of ill-done deeds are early ripeners, and it is seldom the teeth of the children that are set on edge.
Patsy, faring leisurely westward to meet the Princess in the park and be driven home, at the corner of Lyonesse House, just where you turn towards the green of the tree-tops discerned at the street's end, came within the sound of a mighty voice.
A tall, heavily built man of fierce aspect and red choleric face was picking himself up off the ground, opposite a house from which he had been forcibly ejected, and a crowd of ordinary street loafers was gathering about. Patsy would have turned away, but there was something curiously familiar about the tones of the voice and the imaginative dialect which drew her in spite of herself.
"Fower against yin!" shouted the voice; "and three o' them I hae markit. Whaur's your Dukes noo? I hae gi'en yin o' them a fine black eye. If Dukes will not pay their debts, faith, I'll pay their skins. I had a punch at the fat yin too, and doon he went like a bag o' wat sand!"
Patsy hurried forward, elbowing her way vigorously, and the beauty of her dress even more than the dark intensity of her face, caused the throng to make way. She saw the man clearly now, and already the crowd was beginning to seek for missiles.
"Kennedy McClure," she said, taking hold of the man's arm, "come your ways out o' this and as fast as may be—"