Pete took note of Maggie.
“Say, Mag, I’m stuck on yer shape.
It’s outa sight,” he said, parenthetically,
with an affable grin.
As he became aware that she was listening closely,
he grew still more eloquent in his descriptions of
various happenings in his career. It appeared
that he was invincible in fights.
“Why,” he said, referring to a man with
whom he had had a misunderstanding, “dat mug
scrapped like a damn dago. Dat’s right.
He was dead easy. See? He tau’t he
was a scrapper. But he foun’ out diff’ent!
Hully gee.”
He walked to and fro in the small room, which seemed
then to grow even smaller and unfit to hold his dignity,
the attribute of a supreme warrior. That swing
of the shoulders that had frozen the timid when he
was but a lad had increased with his growth and education
at the ratio of ten to one. It, combined with
the sneer upon his mouth, told mankind that there
was nothing in space which could appall him.
Maggie marvelled at him and surrounded him with greatness.
She vaguely tried to calculate the altitude of the
pinnacle from which he must have looked down upon her.
“I met a chump deh odder day way up in deh city,”
he said. “I was goin’ teh see a
frien’ of mine. When I was a-crossin’
deh street deh chump runned plump inteh me, an’
den he turns aroun’ an’ says, ‘Yer
insolen’ ruffin,’ he says, like dat.
‘Oh, gee,’ I says, ‘oh, gee, go
teh hell and git off deh eart’,’ I says,
like dat. See? ‘Go teh hell an’
git off deh eart’,’ like dat. Den
deh blokie he got wild. He says I was a contempt’ble
scoun’el, er somet’ing like dat, an’
he says I was doom’ teh everlastin’ pe’dition
an’ all like dat. ‘Gee,’ I
says, ‘gee! Deh hell I am,’ I says.
‘Deh hell I am,’ like dat. An’
den I slugged ’im. See?”
With Jimmie in his company, Pete departed in a sort
of a blaze of glory from the Johnson home. Maggie,
leaning from the window, watched him as he walked
down the street.
Here was a formidable man who disdained the strength
of a world full of fists. Here was one who had
contempt for brass-clothed power; one whose knuckles
could defiantly ring against the granite of law.
He was a knight.
The two men went from under the glimmering street-lamp
and passed into shadows.
Turning, Maggie contemplated the dark, dust-stained
walls, and the scant and crude furniture of her home.
A clock, in a splintered and battered oblong box
of varnished wood, she suddenly regarded as an abomination.
She noted that it ticked raspingly. The almost
vanished flowers in the carpet-pattern, she conceived
to be newly hideous. Some faint attempts she
had made with blue ribbon, to freshen the appearance
of a dingy curtain, she now saw to be piteous.
She wondered what Pete dined on.
She reflected upon the collar and cuff factory.
It began to appear to her mind as a dreary place
of endless grinding. Pete’s elegant occupation
brought him, no doubt, into contact with people who
had money and manners. It was probable that he
had a large acquaintance of pretty girls. He
must have great sums of money to spend.
