has a tooth that's bucked.'

"'Buck or no buck,' flares out Strokher, 'wot might be the meanin' o'
that remark consernin' being a Englisher?'

"'The fact o' his bein' English,' says Hardenberg, 'is only half the
hoe-handle. 'Tother half being the fact that the first-named gent is all
American. No Yank ain't never took no dust from aft a Englisher, whether
it were war, walkin'-matches, or women.'

"'But they's a Englisher,' sings out Strokher, 'not forty miles from
here as can nick the nose o' a freckled Yank if so be occasion require.'

"Now ain't that plum foolish-like," observed Bunt, philosophically.
"Ain't it plum foolish-like o' them two gesabes to go flyin' up in the
air like two he-hens on a hot plate--for nothin' in the world but
because a neat lookin' feemale woman has looked at 'em some soft?

"Well, naturally, we others--Ally Bazan an' me--we others throws it into
'em pretty strong about bein' more kinds of blame fools than a pup with
a bug; an' they simmers down some, but along o' the way home I kin see
as how they're a-glarin' at each other, an' a-drawin' theirselves up
proud-like an' presumptchoous, an' I groans again, not loud but deep, as
the Good Book says.

"We has two or three more palavers with the Signorita Esperanza and
stacks the deck to beat the harbor police and the Customs people an'
all, an' to nip down the coast with our contraband. An' each time we
chins with the Signorita there's them two locoes steppin' and sidle'n'
around her, actin' that silly-like that me and Ally Bazan takes an'