It was sturdy old Bill Wrenn who snarled, “Oh, shut up!” Bill didn’t feel like standing much just then. He’d punch this fellow as he’d punched Pete, as soon as not—or even sooner.
“Ow…. It’s shut up, is it?… I’ve ’arf a mind to set the ’tecs on you, but I’m lyte. I’ll just ’it you on the bloody nowse.”
Bill Wrenn stepped off the ladder and squared at him. He was sorry that the Cockney was smaller than Pete.
The Cockney came over, feinted in an absent-minded manner, made swift and confusing circles with his left hand, and hit Bill Wrenn on the aforesaid bloody nose, which immediately became a bleeding nose. Bill Wrenn felt dizzy and, sitting on a grain-sack, listened amazedly to the Cockney’s apologetic:
“I’m sorry I ayn’t got time to ’ave the law on you, but I could spare time to ’it you again.”
Bill shook the blood from his nose and staggered at the Cockney, who seized his collar, set him down outside the stable with a jarring bump, and walked away, whistling:
“Come, oh come to our Sunday-school,
Ev-v-v-v-v-v-ry Sunday morn-ing.”
“Gee!” mourned Mr. William Wrenn, “and I thought I was getting this hobo business down pat…. Gee! I wonder if Pete was so hard to lick?”
CHAPTER VI
HE IS AN ORPHAN
Sadly clinging to the plan of the walking-trip he was to have made with Morton, Mr. Wrenn crossed by ferry to Birkenhead, quite unhappily, for he wanted to be discussing with Morton the quaintness of the uniformed functionaries. He looked for the Merian half the way over. As he walked through Birkenhead, bound for Chester, he pricked himself on to note red-brick house-rows, almost shocking in their lack of high front stoops. Along the country road he reflected: “Wouldn’t Morty enjoy this! Farm-yard all paved. Haystack with a little roof on it. Kitchen stove stuck in a kind of fireplace. Foreign as the deuce.”