CHAPTER XVII. — PHILOSOPHY OP FIGHTING.
“You're not a fighter, Bill Hinkley, and that's about the worst fault that I can find against you.”
Such was the beginning of a dialogue between the cousins some three days after the affair which was narrated in our last chapter. The two young men were at the house of the speaker, or rather at his mother's house; where, a favorite and only son, he had almost supreme dominion. He was putting his violin in tune, and the sentences were spoken at intervals with the discordant scraps of sound which were necessarily elicited by this unavoidable musical operation. These sounds might be said to form a running accompaniment for the dialogue, and, considering the sombre mood of the person addressed, they were, perhaps, far more congenial than any more euphonious strains would have been.
“Not a fighter!” said the other; “why, what do you mean?”
“Why, just what I say—you are not a fighter. You love reading, and fiddling, and fishing sometimes, and sometimes dancing, and hunting, and swimming; but I'm pretty certain you don't love fighting. You needn't contradict, Bill—I've been thinking the matter over; and I'm sure of it. I recollect every battle or scrape you ever were in, from the time we went to old Chandler's, and I tell you, you're not a fighter—you don't love fighting!”
This was concluded with a tremendous scrape over the strings, which seemed to say as well as scrape could speak—“There can be no mistake on the subject—I've said it.”
“If I knew exactly what you were driving at,” said the other, “perhaps I might answer you. I never pretended to be a fighter; and as for loving it, as I love eating, drinking, books, fiddling, and dancing, why that needs no answer. Of course I do not, and I don't know who does.”
“There it is. I told you. I knew it. You'd sooner do almost anything than fight.”
“If you mean that I would submit to insult,” said the more peaceable cousin, with some displeasure in his tones and countenance, “sooner than resent it, you are very much mistaken. It wouldn't be advisable even for you to try the experiment.”
“Poh, poh, Bill, you know for that matter that it wouldn't take much trying. I'd lick you as easily now as I did when we were boys together.”