"Tut, Cap, no one really questions your honor--that man will get
himself knocked into a cocked hat if he goes around talking of an
honest girl!"
"A likely thing, when her own cousins and guests take it so quietly."
"What would you have them do, Cap? The longer an affair of this sort is
agitated, the more offensive it becomes! Besides, chivalry is out of
date! The knights-errant are all dead."
"The men are all dead! If any ever really lived!" cried Cap, in a fury.
"Heaven knows I am inclined to believe them to have been a fabulous
race like that of the mastodon or the centaur! I certainly never saw a
creature that deserved the name of man! The very first of your race was
the meanest fellow that ever was heard of--ate the stolen apple and
when found out laid one half of the blame on his wife and the other
on his Maker--'The woman whom thou gavest me' did so and so--pah! I
don't wonder the Lord took a dislike to the race and sent a flood to
sweep them all off the face of the earth! I will give you one more
chance to retrieve your honor--in one word, now--will you fight that
man?"
"My dear little cousin, I would do anything in reason to vindicate the
assailed manhood of my whole sex, but really, now----"
"Will you fight that man? One word--yes, or no?"
"Tut, Cap! you are a very reckless young woman! You--it's your
nature--you are an incorrigible madcap! You bewitch a poor wretch until
he doesn't know his head from his heels--puts his feet into his hat and
covers his scalp with his boots! You are a will-o'-the-wisp who lures a
poor fellow on through woods, bogs and briars, until you land him in
the quicksands! You whirl him around and around until he grows dizzy
and delirious, and talks at random, and then you'd have him called out,
you blood-thirsty little vixen! I tell you, Cousin Cap, if I were to
take up all the quarrels your hoydenism might lead me into, I should
have nothing else to do!"
"Then you won't fight!"
"Can't, little cousin! I have a wife and family, which are powerful
checks upon a man's duelling impulses!"
"Silence! You are no cousin of mine--no drop of your sluggish blood
stagnates in my veins--no spark of the liquid fire of my life's current
burns in your torpid arteries, else at this insult would it set you in
a flame! Never dare to call me cousin again." And so saying, she flung
herself out of the building and into her saddle, put whip to her horse
and galloped away home.