drel 's a
name I've got a retort for, and if it hadn't been you, and you a
gentleman, you'd have had it spanking hot from the end o' my fist.
Perhaps you don't know what sort of a arm I've got? Just you feel that
ther' muscle."

He doubled his arm, the knuckles of the fist toward Algernon's face.

"Down with it, you dog!" cried Algernon, crushing his hat as he started
up.

"It'll come on your nose, if I downs with it, my lord," said Sedgett.
"You've what they Londoners calls 'bonneted yourself.'"

He pulled Algernon by the coat-tail into his seat.

"Stop!" Algernon shouted to the cabman.

"Drive ahead!" roared Sedgett.

This signal of a dissension was heard along the main street of Epsom, and
re-awakened the flagging hilarity of the road.

Algernon shrieked his commands; Sedgett thundered his. They tussled, and
each having inflicted an unpleasant squeeze on the other, they came apart
by mutual consent, and exchanged half-length blows. Overhead, the
cabman--not merely a cabman, but an individual--flicked the flanks of his
horse, and cocked his eye and head in answer to gesticulations from
shop-doors and pavement.

"Let 'em fight it out, I'm impartial," he remarked; and having lifted his
little observing door, and given one glance, parrot-wise, below, he shut
away the troubled prospect of those mortals, and drove along benignly.

Epsom permitted it; but Ewell contained a sturdy citizen, who, smoking
his pipe under his eaves, contemplative of passers-by, saw strife rushing
on like a meteor. He raised the waxed end of his pipe, and with an
authoritative motion of his head at the same time, pointed out the case
to a man in a donkey-cart, who looked behind, saw pugnacity upon wheels,
and manoeuvred a docile and wonderfully pretty-stepping little donkey in
such a manner that the cabman was fain to pull up.

The combatants jumped into the road.

"That's right, gentlemen; I don't want to spile sport," said the donkey's
man. "O' course you ends your Epsom-day with spirit."

"There's sunset on their faces," said the cabman. "Would you try a
by-lane, gentlemen?"

But now the donkey's man had inspected the figures of the antagonistic
couple.

"Taint fair play," he said to Sedgett. "You leave that gentleman alone,
you, sir?"

The man with the pipe came up.

"No fighting," he observed. "We ain't going to have our roads disgraced.
It shan't be said Englishmen don't know how to enjoy themselves without
getting dru