Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/98

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The Lightning Conductor

brown; his eyes are brown too, and they can almost speak. One can't help noticing these things, even in one's chauffeur. If he weren't a chauffeur, one might certainly take him for a gentleman. Some things really are a pity! But never mind.

Brown looked at Monsieur Talleyrand, and then he said, "You are a liar." Oh, my goodness, I expected murder!

Monsieur Talleyrand gave a sort of leap.

"Scoundrel, hog, canaille!" he stammered, trembling all over. "To be insulted by an English cad, a common chauffeur, that a gentleman cannot call out, an incendiary——"

But here Brown broke in with a "Silence!" that made me jump. And the funny part was that it was he who looked the gentleman, and Monsieur Talleyrand the cad—quite a little, mean cad, though he is really handsome, with eyelashes you'd have to measure with a tape. That awful "Silence!" seemed to blow his words down his throat like a gust of wind, and while he was getting breath Brown followed up his first shot; but this time it was aimed my way.

"Do you believe what that coward says?" he flung at me, without even taking hold of the words with "Miss" for a handle. Between the two men and the excitement, I gasped instead of answering, and perhaps he took silence for consent, though that is such an old-fashioned theory, especially when it concerns girls. Anyway, he seemed to grow three or four inches taller, and his chin got squarer. "So far from burning your car," said he (and you could