on. Your sister will tell you I am sometimes
mistaken about children.

MORRIS. I forbid you to appeal to my sister.

CONJURER. That is exactly what a schoolboy would do.

MORRIS. [_With abrupt and dangerous calm._] I am not a schoolboy,
Professor. I am a quiet business man. But I tell you in the country I
come from, the hand of a quiet business man goes to his hip pocket at an
insult like that.

CONJURER. [_Fiercely._] Let it go to his pocket! I thought the hand of a
quiet business man more often went to someone else's pocket.

MORRIS. You....

[_Puts his hand to his hip. The_ DOCTOR _puts his hand on his
shoulder._

DOCTOR. Gentlemen, I think you are both forgetting yourselves.

CONJURER. Perhaps. [_His tone sinks suddenly to weariness._] I ask
pardon for what I said. It was certainly in excess of the young
gentleman's deserts. [_Sighs._] I sometimes rather wish I could forget
myself.

MORRIS. [_Sullenly, after a pause._] Well, the entertainment's coming
on; and you English don't like a scene. I reckon I'll have to bury the
blamed old hatchet too.

DOCTOR. [_With a certain dignity, his social type shining through his
profession._] Mr. Carleon, you will forgive an old man, who knew your
father well, if he doubts whether you are doing yourself justice in
treating yourself as an American Indian, merely because you have lived
in America. In my old friend Huxley's time we of the middle classes
disbelieved in reason and all sorts of things. But we did believe in
good manners. It is a pity if the aristocracy can't. I don't like to
hear you say you are a savage and have buried a tomahawk. I would rather
hear you say, as your Irish ancestors would have said, that you have
sheathed your sword with the dignity proper to a gentleman.

MORRIS. Very well. I've sheathed my sword with the dignity proper to a
gentleman.

CONJURER. And I have sheathed my sword with the dignity proper to a
conjurer.

MORRIS. How does the Conjurer sheath a sword?

CONJURER. Swallows it.

DOCTOR. Then we all agree there shall be no quarrel.

SMITH. May I say a word? I have a great dislike of a quarrel, for a
reason quite beyond my duty to my cloth.

MORRIS. And what is that?

SMITH. I object to a quarrel because it always interrupts an argument.
May I bring you back for a moment to the argument? You were saying that
these modern conjuring tricks are simply the old miracles when they have
once been found out. But surely an