I fetches you a bit of a
flick, how then? Would you be ready to step out with a real Professor?'

'I should claim a fair field,' was the answer, made in modesty.

'And you'd expect to whop me with they there principles of yours?'

'I should expect to.'

'Bang me!' was roared. After a stare at the mild little figure with the
fitfully dead-levelled large grey eyes in front of him, the pork-butcher
resumed: 'Take you for the man you say you be, you're just the man for
my friend Jam and me. He dearly loves to see a set-to, self the same.
What prettier? And if you would be so obliging some day as to favour us
with a display, we'd head a cap conformably, whether you'd the best of
it, according to your expectations, or t' other way:--For there never
was shame in a jolly good licking as the song says: that is, if you take
it and make it appear jolly good. And find you an opponent meet and fit,
never doubt. Ever had the worse of an encounter, sir?'

'Often, Sir.'

'Well, that's good. And it didn't destroy your confidence?'

'Added to it, I hope.'

At this point, it became a crying necessity for Skepsey to escape from
an area of boastfulness, into which he had fallen inadvertently; and he
hastened to apologize 'for his personal reference,' that was intended
for an illustration of our country caught unawares by a highly trained
picked soldiery, inferior in numbers to the patriotic levies, but sharp
at the edge and knowing how to strike. Measure the axe, measure the
tree; and which goes down first?

'Invasion, is it?--and you mean, we're not to hit back?' the
pork-butcher bellowed, and presently secured a murmured approbation from
an audience of three, that had begun to comprehend the dialogue, and
strengthened him in a manner to teach Skepsey the foolishness of ever
urging analogies of too extended a circle to close sharply on the mark.
He had no longer a chance, he was overborne, identified with the fated
invader, rolled away into the chops of the Channel, to be swallowed
up entire, and not a rag left of him, but John Bull tucking up his
shirtsleeves on the shingle beach, ready for a second or a third; crying
to them to come on.

Warmed by his Bullish victory, and friendly to the vanquished, the
pork-butcher told Skepsey he should like to see more of him, and
introduced himself on a card Benjamin Shaplow, not far from the Bank.

They parted at the Terminus, where three shrieks of an engine, sounding
like merry messag