‘My lord,’ had been let fall by Kit Ines.  Conjoined to ‘Mackrell,’ it rang finely, and a trumpeting of ‘Lord Mackrell’ resounded.  Lord Mackrell was asked for ‘more capers and not so much sauce.’  Various fish took part in his title of nobility.  The wag Mackrell continuing to be discreetly silent, and Kit Ines acting as a pacific rearguard, the crowd fell in love with their display of English humour, disposed to the surly satisfaction of a big street dog that has been appeased by a smaller one’s total cessation of growls.

All might have gone well but for the sudden appearance of two figures of young women on the scene.  They fronted the advance of the procession.  They wanted to have a word with Lord Mackrell.  Not a bit of it—­he won’t listen, turns away; and one of the pair slips round him.  It’s regular imploring:  ‘my lord! my lord!’

O you naughty Surrey melodram villain of a Lord Mackrell!  Listen to the young woman, you Mackrell, or you’ll get Billingsgate!  Here’s Mr. Jig-and-Reel behind here, says she’s done him!  By Gosh!  What’s up now?

One of the young ladies of the party ahead had rushed up to the young woman dodging to stand in Lord Mackrell’s way.  The crowd pressed to see.  Kit Ines and his mate shouldered them off.  They performed an envelopment of the gentlemen and ladies, including the two young women.  Kit left his mate and ran to the young woman hitherto the quieter of the two.  He rattled at her.  But she had a tongue of her own and rattled it at him.  What did she say?

Merely to hear, for no other reason,’ a peace-loving crowd of clerks and tradesmen, workmen and their girls, young aspirants to the professions, night-larks of different classes, both sexes, there in that place for simple entertainment, animated simply by the spirit of English humour, contracted, so closing upon the Mackrell party as to seem threatening to the most orderly and apprehensive member of it, who was the baronet, Sir Meeson Corby.

He was a man for the constables in town emergencies, and he shouted.  ‘Cock Robin crowing’ provoked a jolly round of barking chaff.  The noise in a dense ring drew Fleetwood’s temper.  He gave the word to Kit Ines, and immediately two men dropped; a dozen staggered unhit.  The fists worked right and left; such a clearing of ground was never seen for sickle or scythe.  And it was taken respectfully; for Science proclaimed her venerable self in the style and the perfect sufficiency of the strokes.  A bruiser delivered them.  No shame to back away before a bruiser.  There was rather an admiring envy of the party claiming the nimble champion on their side, until the very moderate lot of the Mackrells went stepping forward along the strewn path with sticks pointed.

If they had walked it like gentlemen, they would have been allowed to get through.  An aggressive minority, and with Cock Robin squealing for constables in the midst, is that insolent upstart thing which howls to have a lesson.  The sticks were fallen on; bump came the mass.  Kit Ines had to fight his way back to his mate, and the couple scoured a clearish ring, but the gentlemen were at short thrusts, affable in tone, to cheer the spirits of the ladies:—­’All right, my friend, you’re a trifle mistaken, it ‘s my stick, not yours.’  Therewith the wrestle for the stick.