"Ah--and now, Scanlan," he says, "will you be good enough to explain the cause of the--ah--bitter animosity you have for me?"
"Somebody has been kiddin' you," he tells him. "I ain't got _nothin'_ for you! Where d'ye get that animosity thing?"
Van Ness sighs so hard it like to blowed our hats off.
"It is beastly plain to me," he says, "that I am about as popular in Film City as a cloudburst at a picnic! I am snubbed, ridiculed, vulgarly and subtly insulted! Also I am white and human and--ah--I must confess it has penetrated my skin. _You_ are particularly bitter against me--why?"
"Listen!" he answers finally. "Are you on the level with this? D'ye really wanna know, or are you simply askin' me so's you can pull one of them witty remarks on the way I answer you--_and get walloped on the beak_?"
Van Ness did somethin' then I never seen him do before and only once afterward. _He grinned_! The Roman toga fell off his shoulders, and he leans over with his hands on his hips. On the level, his whole face seemed to change! And then--
"Listen, guy!" pipes this big, dignified whatnot. "I'm on the level, all right and I want the lowdown on this thing, d'ye make me?" (Me and the Kid nearly went dead on our feet listenin'.) "As for wallopin' me on the beak, well--you may be welterweight champion out here, but if you start anything with _me_, I'll remove you from the title, d'ye get that?"
The Kid and me falls back against a rock, fightin' for air!
"Oh, Lady!" whispers the Kid, fannin' himself with his hat. "Did you hear what I did?"
"Well--?" drawls Van Ness, lookin' us over.
"They's just one thing I'd like to know," murmurs the Kid, wipin' his forehead with my handkerchief in the excitement. "What part of dear old England was _you_ born in?"
"Brooklyn!" he says, jerkin' out the eye glass again and stickin' it on his eye. "Surely, my man," he goes on, with that old silly stare of his; "surely you have heard of jolly old Brooklyn--what?"
"I know it well!" says the Kid. "It's on the wrong end of the bridge! But where d'ye get the 'my man' thing? And what have you been goin' around like a Swiss duke or somethin', when it turns out you're only a roughneck from Brooklyn? You wanna know why you don't belong, and don't fit in here, eh? Well, you big hick, where d'ye get that Sedate Sam stuff?" He slaps Van Ness on the arm. "Why in the Hail Columbia don't you bust out and giggle now and then, hey?"
