I look with a black eye? And going round with the carriage with a
split lip?"

"If you don't want your face sp'iled, Charlie, why don't you keep your
mouth shut?" said the person in gaiters.

"Exactly," said Mr. Hoopdriver, driving it home with great fierceness.
"Why don't you shut your ugly mouth?"

"It's as much as my situation's worth," protested Charlie.

"You should have thought of that before," said Hoopdriver.

"There's no occasion to be so thunderin' 'ot about it. I only meant
the thing joking," said Charlie. "AS one gentleman to another, I'm very
sorry if the gentleman's annoyed--"

Everybody began to speak at once. Mr. Hoopdriver twirled his moustache.
He felt that Charlie's recognition of his gentlemanliness was at any
rate a redeeming feature. But it became his pose to ride hard and heavy
over the routed foe. He shouted some insulting phrase over the tumult.

"You're regular abject," the man in gaiters was saying to Charlie.

More confusion.

"Only don't think I'm afraid,--not of a spindle-legged cuss like him,"
shouted Charlie. "Because I ain't."

"Change of front," thought Hoopdriver, a little startled. "Where are we
going?"

"Don't sit there and be abusive," said the man in velveteen. "He's
offered to hit you, and if I was him, I'd hit you now."

"All right, then," said Charlie, with a sudden change of front and
springing to his feet. "If I must, I must. Now, then!" At that,
Hoopdriver, the child of Fate, rose too, with a horrible sense that his
internal monitor was right. Things had taken a turn. He had made a mess
of it, and now there was nothing for it, so far as he could see, but to
hit the man at once. He and Charlie stood six feet apart, with a
table between, both very breathless and fierce. A vulgar fight in
a public-house, and with what was only too palpably a footman! Good
Heavens! And this was the dignified, scornful remonstrance! How the
juice had it all happened? Go round the table at him, I suppose. But
before the brawl could achieve itself, the man in gaiters intervened.
"Not here," he said, stepping between the antagonists. Everyone was
standing up.

"Charlie's artful," said the little man with the beard.

"Buller's yard," said the man with the gaiters, taking the control
of the entire affair with the easy readiness of an accomplished
practitioner. "If the gentleman DON'T mind." Buller's yard, it seemed,
was the very place. "We'll do the thing regular and decent, if
you pl