"Gimme a nigger all day long," said Anarky: "I fa'rly hates a Chinee an' a Orrisher."
"Try it to-day, though, Anarky, for my sake," said I persuasively; and she consented, though sulkily enough.
Hearing Chang-how coming, I seated myself on the stairway leading into the laundry, curious to see how they would work together.
Anarky pointed authoritatively to a heap of dried linen. "Sprinkle dem ar cloze," said she to Chang. "I'm gwine out in de yard to git what's on de line."
While she was gone, Chang-how, as is the manner of his people, filled his mouth with water, and was blowing it in a fine spray over the linen when Anarky appeared in the doorway, a basket of clothes on her head, her knuckles on her hips. As she caught sight of Chang-how moistening the linen with water from his mouth she stopped: she staggered, her basket fell to the floor, and, stooping down, she threw her hands above her head, then brought them down again with a violent slap on her knees.
"Good Lor'! come down," said she, "an' look at dat yaller houn' a-spittin' on Mis' Maud's cloze.—I got you now! Can't nobody blame me fur beatin' you 'bout dat."
Then she flew at him, and what a scene it was! She, black, brawny, of immense physical power—he, lithe, sinewy, supple as a panther. It was a spectacle! First one, then the other, seemed to have the advantage. She would catch him in her powerful grasp, and, lifting him off his feet, swing him in the air as if about to slam him to his final resting-place, when by some inexplicable manœuvre he would writhe from between her fingers or wriggle himself to the back of her neck and mash her nose flat against her breast as if bent on suffocating her or breaking her neck. In a moment she would reach back with both hands and pull him over her head very much as men doff a shirt. Likely as not, Chang came down with his heels in the air, and at it they would go again. Presently she was tripped, and fell with a violence that should have broken every bone in her body, but before Chang-how could pursue his advantage she had wheeled on her side, wound his queue halfway up her arm and had her knee on his breast.
"Good for you, An—! I mean, aren't you ashamed of yourself? Stop! for Heaven's sake, stop! You might kill him."
As well have spoken to the winds. And as they became more terribly in earnest I began to scream for help: "Stop, Anarky! (Murder! murder!)—Here, Chang, take the poker. (Mu—u—u—r—der!) Great Heaven! don't hit her with it! Stop, Chang-how! (Mur—d—e—r! Oh, mercy! somebody come!)—Here, Anarky, take the pota- (Mur—d—e—r—rr!)—potato-masher and don't kill (M—u—r—der!)—kill him with it, unless he kills you first.—Oh, mercy! mercy! I don't know what else to give you all to keep you from killing (Murder!)—killing each other with.—Anarky, you are breaking his neck!—Here's a flatiron, Chang! (Murder! Fire! fire! fire!)"
This brought the neighbors and the neighbors' children, and their neighbors and their neighbors' children, and finally a forlorn policeman, who marched Anarky to the magistrate's office and left Chang to do up his pigtail at leisure, and reflect how often he had sinned and gone unwhipt of justice, and now, in the hour of peace and in the act of duty, retribution had deliberately sought him out, and found him and disposed of him as afore told.