Not only had the serenity departed from the face of Foreman Look, the furious anger of his notoriously short temper had taken its place.

“By the jumped-up jedux,” he shouted, “you pass me any more of that talk, you old hook-nosed cockatoo, and I’ll slap your chops!”

The unterrified veteran of the Viennese brandished his cane to embrace the throng of his red-shirted townsmen, who had been crowding close to hear.  At last his flint had struck the spark that flashed with something of the good old times about it.

“And what do you suppose the town of Vienny would be doin’ whilst you was insultin’ the man who was the chief of old Niag’ry Company for twenty years?” he screamed.

“There’s one elephant that I know about that would be an orphin in about fifteen seconds,” growled one of the loyal members of the Vienna company, the lust of old days of rivalry beginning to stir in his blood.

“Would, hey?” shouted an Ancient, with the alacrity of one who has old-time grudges still unsettled.  He put a sandwich back into his basket untasted, an ominous sign of how belligerency was overcoming appetite.  “Well, make b’lieve I’m the front door of the orphin asylum, and come up and rap on me!”

With a promptitude that was absolutely terrifying the two lines of red shirts began to draw together, voices growling bodingly, fists clinching, eyes narrowing with the reviving hatred of old contests.  The triumphal entry of the Smyrna Ancients, their display of prosperity, their monopoly of the plaudits and attention of the throngs, the assumption of superior caste and manners, had stirred resentment under every red shirt in the parade.  But Vienna, hereditary foe, seemed to be the one tacitly selected for the brunt of the conflict.

“Hiram!” pleaded his wife, running to him and patting his convulsed features with trembling fingers.  “You said this was all goin’ to be genteel.  You said you were goin’ to show ’em how good manners and politeness ought to run a firemen’s muster.  You said you were!”

By as mighty an effort of self-control as he ever exercised in his life, Hiram managed to gulp back the sulphurous vilification he had ready at his tongue’s end, and paused a moment.

“That’s right!  I did say it!” he bellowed, his eyes sweeping the crowd over his wife’s shoulder.  “And I mean it.  It sha’n’t be said that the Smyrna Ancients were anything but gents.  Let them that think a bunged eye and a bloody nose is the right kind of badges to wear away from a firemen’s muster keep right on in their hellish career.  As for us”—­he tucked his wife’s arm under his own—­“we remember there’s ladies present.”

“Includin’ the elephant,” suggested the irrepressible Uncle Trufant, indicating with his cane Imogene “weaving” amiably in the sunshine.

Cap’n Sproul crowded close and growled into the ear of the venerable mischief-maker:  “I don’t know who set you on to thorn this crowd of men into a fight, and I don’t care.  But there ain’t goin’ to be no trouble here, and, if you keep on tryin’ to make it, I’ll give you one figger of the Portygee fandle-dingo.”