“Stir but a single step and I fire.”
Upon which, the restive steed tried to gallop over the highwayman and to gallop round him, and eventually to turn and gallop back; the highwayman was just on the point of snapping his last cap and rendering the noble horse senseless when, most inopportunely, the highwayman’s mother appeared at the corner.
“Teddy Sullivin! Come here, ye mis’rable little hound, and let me knock the head off of ye, ye onholy son of a good parint that ye are.”
This interruption left the struggle at a highly interesting point, but Master Sullivan before leaving said that he proposed to get a proper revolver, some day, and then there would be larks of the rarest and most exciting kind. Meanwhile, added Master Sullivan as he went off, the watchword was “Death to Injuns!”
Bobbie, after a highly enjoyable morning, went home, where, thanks to Mrs. Rastin, the house reeked with a perfectly entrancing odour of frying steak and onions. To this meal Mrs. Rastin invited a lady from downstairs, called the Duchess, who wore several cheap rings and spoke with a tone of acquired refinement that had always impressed Bobbie very much. He remembered, though, that his mother had warned him never to speak to this lady from downstairs, and when that vivacious lady addressed him at his meal, he refused at first to answer her, thus forcing the conversation to be shared exclusively by the two ladies. They talked of rare tavern nights, the lady from downstairs shaking her head reminiscently as she re-called diverting incidents of the past, declaring that the world was no longer what it had been.
“Why, there’s no Cremorne, now,” argued the Duchess affectedly.
“True, true!” agreed Mrs. Rastin.
“Argyll Rooms, and the rest of it, all swept away,” complained the Duchess.
“It’s sickenin’,” said Mrs. Rastin. “I s’pose they was rare times if the truth was known.”
“You’d never believe?”