"But any'ow I don't care! I had the spunk to ass 'im, an' he din 'ave the spunk to dischawge me! All he can do; 'tis to shake the fis' of impatience." He was looking into his companion's face, as they walked, with an eye distended with defiance.
"Look out!" exclaimed Richling, reaching a hurried hand to draw him aside. Narcisse swerved just in time to avoid stepping into a pile of crockery, but in so doing went full into the arms of a stately female figure dressed in the crispest French calico and embarrassed with numerous small packages of dry goods. The bundles flew hither and yon. Narcisse tried to catch the largest as he saw it going, but only sent it farther than it would have gone, and as it struck the ground it burst like a pomegranate. But the contents were white: little thin, square-folded fractions of barred jaconet and white flannel; rolls of slender white lutestring ribbon; very narrow papers of tiny white pearl buttons, minute white worsted socks, spools of white floss, cards of safety-pins, pieces of white castile soap, etc.
"_Mille pardons, madame!_" exclaimed Narcisse; "I make you a thousan' poddons, madam!"
He was ill-prepared for the majestic wrath that flashed from the eyes and radiated from the whole dilating, and subsiding, and reëxpanding, and rising, and stiffening form of Kate Ristofalo!
"Officerr," she panted,--for instantly there was a crowd, and a man with the silver-crescent badge was switching the assemblage on the legs with his cane to make room,--"Officerr," she gasped, levelling her tremulous finger at Narcisse, "arrist that man!"
"Mrs. Ristofalo!" exclaimed Richling, "don't do that! It was all an accident! Why, don't you see it's Narcisse,--my friend?"
"Yer frind rised his hand to sthrike me, sur, he did! Yer frind rised his hand to sthrike me, he did!" And up she went and down she went, shortening and lengthening, swelling and decreasing. "Yes, yes, I know yer frind; indeed I do! I paid two dollars and a half fur his acquaintans nigh upon three years agone, sur. Yer frind!" And still she went up and down, enlarging, diminishing, heaving her breath and waving her chin around, and saying, in broken utterances,--while a hackman on her right held his whip in her auditor's face, crying, "Carriage, sir? Carriage, sir?"--