neighborhood could testify with sorrow and with tears. He weighed eleven
pounds. He kept himself in training; and, where others lived for love or
wealth or art, Ash-Can Sam existed for a finish fight alone. At the
present speaking he came swaggering around a corner, and paused in
astonishment at the sight of a stranger sitting in the middle of the
street. The insolence of it! It was past belief!

"Oh, please, Mr. Bo!" wailed Lizzie, wringing her paws as she perched
upon the roof. "Do hurry while youse has got de chanst! He'll rip you
somethin' terrible! For _my_ sake, dearie, _won't_ you slope?"

"No, not upon your life!" called Omar Ben gravely. "I will not demean
myself by retreating from any cat alive."

This statement was fat with brave audacity, but lean in the matter of
discretion; so Pete leaned down with one last friendly whisper of appeal:

"W'y, you chowder-headed ass, he'll make yer look like a moth-et flannel
shirt! _Beat it_!"

The patrician declined to "beat it," and Ash-Can Sam edged a little
closer, wearing a dissolute, wicked leer of joy. He circled slowly round
the stranger cat, eying Omar Ben's glossy coat and humming a sort of
vulgar chant:

Ain't it a sham-m-m-m-e!
To chaw up mommer's sugar-pet,
An' hurt his nose, not soon, but yet.
Oh, ain't it a sham-m-m-m-e!