Then Haywood knew that it must be.  He took off his coat, folded it neatly and laid it on the roadside grass, placed his hat upon it and began to unknot his blue silk tie.

“Hadn’t yer better ring fer yer maid, Arabella?” taunted “Smoky.”  “Wot yer going to do—­go to bed?”

“I’m going to give you a good trouncing,” said the hero.  He did not hesitate, although the enemy was far beneath him socially.  He remembered that his father once thrashed a cabman, and the papers gave it two columns, first page.  And the Toadies’ Magazine had a special article on Upper Cuts by the Upper Classes, and ran new pictures of the Van Plushvelt country seat, at Fishampton.

“Wot’s trouncing?” asked “Smoky,” suspiciously.  “I don’t want your old clothes.  I’m no—­oh, you mean to scrap!  My, my!  I won’t do a thing to mamma’s pet.  Criminy!  I’d hate to be a hand-laundered thing like you.

“Smoky” waited with some awkwardness for his adversary to prepare for battle.  His own decks were always clear for action.  When he should spit upon the palm of his terrible right it was equivalent to “You may fire now, Gridley.”

The hated patrician advanced, with his shirt sleeves neatly rolled up.  “Smoky” waited, in an attitude of ease, expecting the affair to be conducted according to Fishampton’s rules of war.  These allowed combat to be prefaced by stigma, recrimination, epithet, abuse and insult gradually increasing in emphasis and degree.  After a round of these “you’re anothers” would come the chip knocked from the shoulder, or the advance across the “dare” line drawn with a toe on the ground.  Next light taps given and taken, these also increasing in force until finally the blood was up and fists going at their best.

But Haywood did not know Fishampton’s rules.  Noblesse oblige kept a faint smile on his face as he walked slowly up to “Smoky” and said: 

“Going to play ball?”

“Smoky” quickly understood this to be a putting of the previous question, giving him the chance to make practical apology by answering it with civility and relevance.

“Listen this time,” said he.  “I’m goin’ skatin’ on the river.  Don’t you see me automobile with Chinese lanterns on it standin’ and waitin’ for me?”

Haywood knocked him down.

“Smoky” felt wronged.  To thus deprive him of preliminary wrangle and objurgation was to send an armoured knight full tilt against a crashing lance without permitting him first to caracole around the list to the flourish of trumpets.  But he scrambled up and fell upon his foe, head, feet and fists.

The fight lasted one round of an hour and ten minutes.  It was lengthened until it was more like a war or a family feud than a fight.  Haywood had learned some of the science of boxing and wrestling from his tutors, but these he discarded for the more instinctive methods of battle handed down by the cave-dwelling Van Plushvelts.