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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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784 ‘No one need trouble himself to stir,’ said the young gentleman, ‘I am going to remain in the house all night, and shall be found here in the morning if there is any assault to answer for.’ ‘What did you strike him for?’ asked one of the bystanders. ‘Ah! what did you strike him for?’ demanded the others. The unpopular gentleman looked coolly round, and addressing himself to Nicholas, said: ‘You inquired just now what was the matter here. The matter is simply this. Yonder person, who was drinking with a friend in the coffee-room when I took my seat there for half an hour before going to bed, (for I have just come off a journey, and preferred stopping here tonight, to going home at this hour, where I was not expected until tomorrow,) chose to express himself in very disrespectful, and insolently familiar terms, of a young lady, whom I recognised from his description and other circumstances, and whom I have the honour to know. As he spoke loud enough to be overheard by the other guests who were present, I informed him most civilly that he was mistaken in his conjectures, which were of an offensive nature, and requested him to forbear. He did so for a little time, but as he chose to renew his conversation when leaving the room, in a more offensive strain than before, I could not refrain from making after him, and facilitating his departure by a kick, which reduced him to the posture in which you saw him just now. I am the best judge of my own affairs, I take it,’ said the young man, who had certainly not quite recovered from his recent heat; ‘if anybody here thinks proper to make this quarrel his own, I have not the smallest earthly objection, I do assure him.’ Of all possible courses of proceeding under the circumstances detailed, there was certainly not one which, in his then state of |
