Though Sue believed, yet all that night the strange fancy possessed her of seeing her playmate lover laid out in the room below, with the withering immortelles faintly scenting the awful dusk about his still cold face.
Bob Nettles's reception of the challenge by the hand of Wylde Payne was rather informal. He was just roused in the attic over the counting-house, and said after reading, "I can't promise not to visit in my employer's house if he asks me, but I'm mighty sorry."
"I'm afraid that will not do," said Payne coldly, "but you might give up your situation."
"Me give up my place?" said Bob, touched on the business edge. "If that's your biz, you'd better trot."
"Your friend will find me there," said Payne coldly, laying down his card and going.
But when Bob sought a second, all his business intimates refused, like Joe Skinner, mud clerk—i. e. receiving clerk—at the wharf: "I don't mind knocking a man over with a dray-pin in the way of business," said he, "but this ain't in my line. If anybody wants anything out o' Joe Skinner, he gets it then and there. If he wants more, the shop ain't shut: he can get it served hot at all hours. But this cold-luncheon style o' fightin' ain't in my line."
Bob succeeded in finding a second, however, with pluck enough to meet the whole Brown clan. Below is the correspondence:
MASON'S NOTE.
Sir: You will sign the enclosed apology, and pledge yourself not to visit in the family whose hospitality you have abused, or give me the usual satisfaction.
L.B. Mason.