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 please." And before he completely
realized what was happening, Hoopdriver was being marched out
through the back premises of the inn, to the first and only fight
with fists that was ever to glorify his life.
Outwardly, so far as the intermittent moonlight showed, Mr.
Hoopdriver was quietly but eagerly prepared to fight. But
inwardly he was a chaos of conflicting purposes. It was
extraordinary how things happened. One remark had trod so closely
on the heels of another, that he had had the greatest difficulty
in following the development of the business. He distinctly
remembered himself walking across from one room to the other,--a
dignified, even an aristocratic figure, primed with considered
eloquence, intent upon a scathing remonstrance to these wretched
yokels, regarding their manners.
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