MYERS (_to D’Arneaux_). I have no quarrel with you, sir. (_To Hood._) You will hear from me in the morning. Your profession, sir? HOOD. It is honorable, sir. Be assured that I feel the degradation of the match as much as yourself. MYERS. This squabble with the free states has seemed to convey the idea to every scrub in the south that he must carry the honor of his own section on his own little back. D’A. Squabble? MYERS. Well, what else? Neither section has an army, or a respectable ship of war. There are not ten thousand men in the country that know a right-shoulder shift from a present. This is a fanatical mob broke loose. BRIGHTLY. Myers, it is cruelty to a lunatic to fight you. MYERS. Nothing collapses the vanity of a ponderous presumption so quick as a ridiculous fact. BRIGHTLY (_to Hood and D’Arneaux_). Oh, he knows it all. (_To Myers._) Look here. I knew of a Johnny Bull once that had the conceit taken out of him by a little nation that made a navy out of its little coasting schooners. It lays hard on Johnny’s stomach to this day. HOOD. Whatever the merits of this quarrel may be, John Bull will soon observe that it don’t take three years to make a soldier on this side of the water. MYERS. Come, Brightly, as you and I have not quarrelled, let us have a whack at the national game. (_Deals cards—they play._) BRIGHTLY. Myers, you are the sauciest devil in Mobile. MYERS. Why? BRIGHTLY. Because you are the best shot, I suppose. MYERS. Then Mobile tolerates me, does it? HOOD. It does. MYERS. Then suppose it should choose to do otherwise? HOOD. Some citizen would wring your nose and kick you out. (_Myers springs to his feet, Brightly between._) BRIGHTLY. Hold on, gentlemen. There’s time enough to settle this hash in the morning. (_Pushes Myers to his chair._) Deal the cards. MYERS. These gentlemen insist on being insultingly snappish. HOOD. This is a slave state, sir, but not an auction room. I desire you to understand the strength of my contempt for yourself and the business that gives you a dishonorable living. MYERS. If you should ever cross the water, do you think anything in the line of Royalty would be able to obtain any condescension from you? HOOD. I associate with nothing but gentlemen, sir. MYERS. And I suppose you fight nothing but gentlemen, sir? HOOD. I sometimes kick a ruffian! MYERS (_suppressed rage_). Indeed! We will see how hard you kick, in the morning. Say, Brightly. Now you are off for the army, sell me that little red-cheeked jade I saw carrying your baggage to the depot. BRIGHTLY (_catching a look from D’A._). No siree! That girl is the smartest piece of meat in the whole of Tennessee! I brought her up from a baby. Why, she can sing like an Opera, and read—wal, she does all the readin’ and letter writin’ on the plantation. (_Hood and D’A. converse—R._) MYERS. I s’pose that all goes for talk!