You may even call him a coward without finding
more than a boot whiz past your ear, but you must not call a man a
bastard unless you are prepared to prove it on his front teeth.
"You might ha' kep' that till I wasn't so sore," said Lew
sorrowfully, dodging round Jakin's guard.
"I'll make you sorer," said Jakin genially, and got home on Lew's
alabaster forehead. All would have gone well and this story, as
the books say, would never have been written, had not his evil
fate prompted the Bazar-Sergeant's son, a long, employless man of
five-and-twenty, to put in an appearance after the first round. He
was eternally in need of money, and knew that the boys had silver.
"Fighting again," said he. "I'll report you to my father, and
he'll report you to the Colour-Sergeant."
"What's that to you?" said Jakin with an unpleasant dilation of
the nostrils.
"Oh! nothing to me. You'll get into trouble, and you've been up
too often to afford that."
"What the Hell do you know about what we've done?" asked Lew the
Seraph. "You aren't in the Army, you lousy, cadging civilian."
He closed in on the man's left flank.
"Jes' 'cause you find two gentlemen settlin' their diff'rences
with their fistes you stick in your ugly nose where you aren't
wanted.
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