“Give me time, and I’ll call you a lot more,” I retorted, sullenly.

“Good—­I’ll give you the time,” he said.  “Go ahead.  I’ll listen to you for a whole hour.  What am I besides a meddler, and a stupid old idiot, and an old fool?”

“You’re a gray-headed maniac, and a—­a zinc-fastened Zany.  A doddering dotard and a chimerical chump,” I said.

“Splendid!” roared he, with a spasm of laughter that seemed nearly to rend him.  “Go on.  Keep it up.  I am enjoying myself hugely.”

“You’re a sneak-livered poltroon to treat me this way,” I added, indignantly.

“That’s the best yet,” he interrupted, slapping his knee with delight.  “Sneak-livered poltroon, eh?  Well, well, well.  Go on.  Go on.”

“If you’ll give me a copy of Roget’s Thesaurus, I’ll tell you what else you are,” I retorted, with a note of sarcasm in my voice.  “It will require a reference to that book to do you justice.  I can’t begin to carry all that you are in my mind.”

“With pleasure,” said he, and reaching over to his bookcase he took thence the desired volume and handed it to me.  “Proceed,” he added.  “I am all ears.”

“Most jackasses are,” I returned, savagely.

“Magnificent,” he cried, ecstatically.  “You are a genius at epithet.  But there’s the book.  Let me light a cigar for you and then you can begin.  Only do take off that absurd tile.  You don’t know how supremely unbecoming it is.”

There was nothing for it, so I resolved to make the best of it by meeting the disagreeable old pantaloon on his own ground.  I lit one of his cigars and sat down to tell the curious old freak what I thought of him.  Ordinarily I would have avoided doing this, but his tyrannical exercise of his temporary advantage made me angry to the very core of my being.

“Ready?” said I.

“Quite,” said he.  “Don’t stint yourself.  Just behave as if you’d known me all your life.  I sha’n’t mind.”

And I began:  “Well, after referring to the word ‘idiot’ in the index, just to get a lead,” I said, “I shall begin by saying that you are evidently a hebetudinous imbecile, an indiscriminate stult—­”

“Hold on!” he cried.  “What’s that last?  I never heard the term before.”

“Stult—­an indiscriminate stult,” I said, scornfully.  “I invented the word myself.  Real words won’t describe you.  Stult is a new term, meaning all kinds of a fool, plus two.  And I’ve got a few more if you want them.”

“Want them?” he cried.  “By Vulcan, I dote upon them!  They are nectar to my thirsty ears.  Go on.”

“You are a senseless frivoler, a fugacious gid, an infamous hoddydoddy; you are a man with the hoe with the emptiness of ages in your face; you are a brother to the ox, with all the dundering niziness of a plain, ordinary buzzard added to your shallow-brained asininity.  Now will you let me go?”

“Not I,” said he, shaking his head as if he relished a situation which was gradually making a madman of me.  “I’d like to oblige you, but I really can’t.  You are giving me too much pleasure.  Is there nothing more you can call me?”