Page:A Bayard from Bengal.djvu/74

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42
A BAYARD FROM BENGAL

constitutional right under Magna Charta to provide my own nosewipe."

And, as even my Lord Jack admitted that this was legally correct, Mr Bhosh produced a very large handsome nosekerchief in parti-coloured silks.

This he tore into narrow strips, the ends of which he tied together in such a manner that the whole was elongated to an incredible length. Then, tossing one extremity to his lordship, and retaining the other in his own hand, he said: "We will fight, if you please, across this—or not at all!"

Which caused a working majority of the company, and even Lord Jack Jolly himself, to burst into enthusiastic plaudits of the ingenuity and dexterity with which Mr Bhosh had contrived to extricate himself from the prongs of his Caudine fork.

The Duchess, however, was knitting her brows into the baleful pattern of a scowl—for she knew as well as Chunder Bindabun himself that no human pistol was capable