Mr. Pat was at once chagrined and incensed. He happened, further, to be
in most sensitive vein as regards little oversights in his department.
His professional pride was tortured with the recollection that, only
three days before, he had permitted the _Post_ to refer to old Major
Lamar as "that immortal veterinary," and upon the _Post's_ seeking to
retrieve itself the next day, at the Major's insistent demand, he had
fallen into another error. The hateful words had come out as "immoral
veteran."

"Now look here!" said he, "there's nothing to be gained talking that
way. Ye've got me--I'll give ye that! But what do ye expect?--eighty
columns of type a night and niver a little harmless slip--?"

"You must be taught to make no slips with my articles. I'm going to
punish you for that--"

"What-a-at! Say that agin!"

"Stand out here--I am going to give you a good thrashing. I shall whip
..."

Another man would have laughed heartily and told the young man to trot
away while the trotting was good. He was nearly half a foot shorter than
Mr. Pat, and his face advertised his unmartial customs. But Mr. Pat had
the swift fierce passions of his race; and it became to him an
unendurable thing to be thus bearded by a little spectacled person in
his own den. He saw red; and out shot his good right arm.

The little Doctor proved a good sailer, but bad at making a landing. His
course was arched, smooth, and graceful, but when he stopped, he did it
so bluntly that men working two stories below looked up to ask each
other who was dead. Typesetters left their machines and hurried up,
fearing that here was a case for ambulance or undertaker. But they saw
the fallen editor pick himself up, with a face of stupefied wonder, and
immediately start back toward the angry proof-reader.

Mr. Pat lowered redly on his threshhold. "G'awn now! Get away!"

Queed came to a halt a pace away and stood looking at him.

"G'awn, I tell ye! I don't want no more of your foolin'!"

The young man, arms hanging inoffensively by his side, stared at him
with a curious fixity.

These tactics proved strangely disconcerting to Mr. Pat, obsessed as he
was by a sudden sense of shame at having thumped so impotent an
adversary.

"Leave me be, Mr. Queed. I'm sorry I hit ye, and I niver would 'a' done
it--if ye hadn't--"

The man's voice died away. He became lost in a great wonder as to what
under heaven this little Four-eyes meant by standing there and stari