Page:Whirligigs (1910).djvu/105

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Sociology in Serge and Straw
93

“Say,” said he, “I knows you. You’re the pup that belongs in that swell private summer sanitarium for city guys over there. I seen you come out of the gate. You can’t bluff nobody because you’re rich. And because you got on swell clothes. Arabella! Yah!’

“Ragamuffin!” said Haywood.

“Smoky” picked up a fence-rail splinter and laid it on his shoulder.

“Dare you to knock it off,” he challenged.

“I wouldn’t soil my hands with you,” said the aristocrat.

“’Fraid,” said “Smoky” concisely. “Youse city ducks ain’t got the sand. I kin lick you with one hand.”

“I don’t wish to have any trouble with you,” said Haywood. “I asked you a civil question; and you replied like a—like a—a cad.”

“Wot’s a cad!” asked “Smoky.”

“A cad is a disagreeable person,” answered Haywood, “who lacks manners and doesn’t know his place. They sometimes play baseball.”

“I can tell you what a mollycoddle is,” said “Smoky.” “It’s a monkey dressed up by its mother and sent out to pick daisies on the lawn.”

“When you have the honour to refer to the members of my family,” said Haywood, with some dim ideas of a code in his mind, “you’d better leave the ladies out of your remarks.”

“Ho! ladies!” mocked the rude one. “I say ladies! I know what them rich women in the city does. They