Inflamed a little by drink as well as by a sense of injury, the cabman prepared to exact a summary vengeance. Breathing slaughter he came at Mr. Whitcomb with his fists in the air; and that gentleman, stepping aside coolly and nimbly, hit him with a hand ungloved for the purpose a heavy blow in the face. The cabman dropped like a log in the slush of the gutter. “A broken nose,” said Mr. Whitcomb, turning to his companion, while they stood watching the unfortunate cabman gather himself slowly and painfully together. “I feel for you, cabby,” said the solicitor, to his rueful assailant, “but I can assure you this is wholly in the public interest. Thieves and bullies, as well as fools, have to be taught by experience.” “Why the ’ell didn’t yer sye so?” whimpered the cabman, as he strove in vain to stanch the blood that poured from his nose. “’Ow the ’ell should I know yer could use ’em? I piked yer fer a toff in yer ’igh ’at and yer fur coat and yer glass eye; ’ow the ’ell should I know yer could use ’em?” “That is for you banditti to discover,” was the rejoinder of his fare. “It is perhaps my chief recreation to thrash hansom cabmen in the interests of society. I am proud to say your case is one of many.” “Blow me tight, a prize-fighter!” “It is not too much to say I might have aspired to that calling, if the somewhat material nature of my ambitions had not summoned me to a more lucrative if less honorable practice. Twenty years ago I was considered rather useful with the gloves.” “Not so rusty nah, guv’nor,” said the cabman, imperfectly mollified, and stanching his nose with his sleeve. “Give us a extra bob an’ I’ll drive to the ’orspital.” “Here is your sovereign,” said Mr. Whitcomb. “Training and education make one so punctilious in regard to one’s word, although common sense assures one that like the majority of your class you are a rogue, a liar, and a bully; in a word, a common pirate. Here is your money; and have the goodness to take yourself off as reticently as you can.” There was not a more astonished Jehu amid the ranks of his London brethren than this unfortunate specimen, as he climbed into the seat he had left so injudiciously. Bestowing a succession of brutal strokes of the whip upon his even more unfortunate horse, he was lost immediately in the sleet and darkness of the morning, leaving Northcote, who was only slightly less astonished than his bleeding and blasphemous self, standing at the side of the solicitor against the gate of the latter’s residence. XI MR. WHITCOMB’S FOIBLES