“Off with your cap, sir, before a lady!” calls out Bedford.
“Hoff with my cap! you be blo——”
But he said no more, for little Bedford jumped some two feet from the ground, and knocked the cap off, so that a cloud of ambrosial powder filled the room with violet odours. The immense frame of the giant shook at this insult: “I will be the death on you, you little beggar!” he grunted out; and was advancing to destroy Dick, just as I entered in the cloud which his head had raised.
“I’ll knock the brains as well as the powder out of your ugly head!” says Bedford, springing at the poker. At which juncture I entered.
“What—what is this disturbance?” I say, advancing with an air of mingled surprise and resolution.
“You git out of the way till I knock his ’ead off!” roars Bulkeley.
“Take up your cap, sir, and leave the room,” I say, still with the same elegant firmness.
“Put down that there poker, you coward!” bellows the monster on board wages.
“Miss Prior!” I say (like a dignified hypocrite, as I own I was), “I hope no one has offered you a rudeness?” And I glare round, first at the knight of the bleeding nose, and then at his squire.
Miss Prior’s face, as she replied to me, wore a look of awful scorn.