“‘Hadds,’ says I, ’leggo the lady.  We pass.  Let us retire behind the prescription counter and bear up like men.  There’s only one thing on earth that E. G. W. Scraggs is willin’ to admit has him trimmed to a peak, and you see that same before you now.  ’Twas ever thus since childhood’s hour, when my maiden Aunt Susan took the raisin’ of me.  Take any form thou wilt but this, and my firm nerve ain’t goin’ to tremble; but stacked again this form, my nerve is floppin’ like a hotel wash in a hurricane.’

“So I slung Hadds over my shoulder and we went behind the prescription counter.

“I tried to distract his mind by tellin’ him a funny story.  However, the rip-split-smash outside kind of jumbled three yarns into one.  Besides, Hadds was foamin’ so it was all I could do to keep him from goin’ over and kickin’ the Major, who still was oblivious to surroundings, and enwrapped in the gentle art of sneezin’.  Then there come a fearful bump from outside.  I knew by that a showcase was no more.

“‘Zeke!’ yells Hadds, ‘think of somethin’ before that woman has us all in.’

“‘Haddsy, old horse,’ I says, ’we’ve only got one show.  If we can create a diversion we win.  My head’s that rumpled, the only thing strikes me is for us to go out there and play cat-fight.  Holler, and meaowl, and spit, and screech, and jump around till she can’t help but look at us.  That’s the way I uset to amuse the twins when they needed killin’; of course we’ll look like a pair of fools——­’

“‘Yes!’ hollers Hadds.  ’What do we look like now?  You get three guesses!’

“‘Come along!’ says I.

“Well, dear friends and brothers, our hearts was in that diversion, let alone the stake we’d invested in the store.  If you don’t think one bald-headed E. G. W. Scraggs and one red-headed Tommy Hadds put up a high-grade article of cat-fight I don’t know how I’m goin’ to prove to the contrary; but it was so.

[Illustration:  “Put up a high-grade article of cat-fight.”]

“Why, we buck-jumped four foot in the air, sideways, edgeways and straight pitch-and-teeter; we mi-auwed, and scratched, and tore and rolled over, and kicked with our hind legs, and such yells was never heard in a human habitation before nor since.

“It worked.  The Mayoress stopped and leaned over the counter.

“‘Warm it up, Hadds!’ I whispers.  ‘We got her lookin’!’

“So then we rollicked for a ramps.  I see the Majoress smile; she p’inted her finger toward us.

“’S-sick ’em!’ says she.  ’Sick ’em, Towser!’

“It would have been all right; we was playin’ on velvet, and could have led that woman out of the store as easy as anything if that concussed Major hadn’t ‘a’ come to in the wrong place.

“I caught one glimpse of him holdin’ tight with both hands to a shelf, with his eyes jumpin’ out of his head and his face as white as flour.

“Of course no man would really believe that the spectacle of two grown men playin’ cat-fight in the ruins of a drug store, whilest his own wife looked on and said ’Sick ’em!’ was anything but an optickle delusion, caused by reasons he was familiar with.