Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/126

 under the table and called me names for not going and knocking the fellow down.

"Don't you see, he's peppering those people's dinner with his dandruff," he said. Be a sport and go and kick him well, young fellow."

But I knew better. The lieutenant would have spitted me on the end of his sword before I could say Jack Robinson.

Gradually Mark's wrath melted away and he saw only the funny side of the affair. When the lieutenant had taken his seat at the table, he put one knee over the other and ordered his pea soup on the rough—that is, with the husks intact.

"Husks are filling, you know," said Mark, "or perhaps his stomach is full of chickens. Chicks like husks; that lieutenant is human, after all."

I thought we had seen enough and I encouraged him to go home.

"Oh, no," he said. "I am going to see this circus to the end. Presently that old woman will vomit when one of the lieutenant's bristles tickles her funny bone, and then she will spew all over his boots and pants. I am waiting for that." 122