“Come to one who awaits thee, and who assigns herself

“Your devoted,

“SALLIANNA.”

Jinks frowned a terrible frown, and ground his teeth.

For a moment, he stood gazing with profound contempt upon the letter which he had just read; then seizing his shears, snipped the unfortunate sheet into microscopic fragments, all the while frowning with terrible intensity.

The letter destroyed, Jinks stood for a moment with folded arms, scowling and reflecting.

Suddenly he strode to the other side of the room, kicking off his slippers as he went, and hurling his night-cap at the mirror.

“Yes!” he cried, grinding his teeth, “I’ll do it, and without delay—­perfidious woman!”

In ten minutes Mr. Jinks had assumed his usual fashionable costume, and buckled on his sword.  A savage flirt of his locks completed his toilette, and in all the splendor of his scarlet stockings and embroidered waistcoat, he issued forth.

CHAPTER XXIX.

INTERCHANGE OF COMPLIMENTS.

O’Brallaghan, as he passed through the shop, requested to be informed where Mr. Jinks was going.

Jinks stopped, and scowled at Mr. O’Brallaghan, thereby intimating that his, Jinks’, private rights were insolently invaded by a coarse interrogatory.

O’Brallaghan observed, that if Mr. Jinks was laboring under the impression that he, O’Brallaghan, was to be frowned down by an individual of his description, he was greatly mistaken.  And by way of adding to the force of this observation, Mr. O’Brallaghan corrugated his forehead in imitation of his adversary.

Jinks replied, that he was equally indifferent to the scowls of Mr. O’Brallaghan, and expressed his astonishment and disgust at being annoyed, when he was going out to take some exercise for the benefit of his health.

O’Brallaghan informed Mr. Jinks that the going out had nothing to do with it, and that he, Jinks, knew very well that he, O’Brallaghan, objected to nothing but the tone assumed toward himself by the said Jinks, whose airs were not to be endured, and, in future, would not be, by him.  If this was not satisfactory, he, the said Jinks, might take the law of him, or come out and have it decided with shillalies, either of which courses were perfectly agreeable to him, O’Brallaghan.

Whereupon, Jinks expanded his nostril, and said that gentlemen did not use the vulgar Irish weapon indicated.

To which O’Brallaghan replied, that the circumstance in question would not prevent Mr. Jinks’ using the weapon.

A pause followed these words, broken in a moment, however, by Mr. Jinks, who stated that Mr. O’Brallaghan was a caitiff.

O’Brallaghan, growing very red in the face, observed that Mr. Jinks owed his paternity to a “gun.”

Jinks, becoming enraged thereupon, drew his sword, and declared his immediate intention of ridding the earth of a scoundrel and a villain.