He knew only
that his gorge rose at the thought of it.
"You just let 'em try it!" he said threateningly, as he slid down from
the chair. And as he went out of the door, after further conversation
on the same subject, he called back those warning words once more: "Just
let 'em try it! Just once--that's all _I_ ask 'em to. They'll find out
what they GET!"
The barber chuckled. Then a fly lit on the barber's nose and he slapped
at it, and the slap missed the fly but did not miss the nose. The barber
was irritated. At this moment his birdlike eye gleamed a gleam as it
fell upon customers approaching: the prettiest little girl in the world,
leading by the hand her baby brother, Mitchy-Mitch, coming to have
Mitchy-Mitch's hair clipped, against the heat.
It was a hot day and idle, with little to feed the mind--and the barber
was a mischievous man with an irritated nose. He did his worst.
Meanwhile, the brooding Penrod pursued his homeward way; no great
distance, but long enough for several one-sided conflicts with malign
insulters made of thin air. "You better NOT call me that!" he muttered.
"You just try it, and you'll get what other people got when THEY tried
it. You better not ack fresh with ME! Oh, you WILL, will you?" He
delivered a vicious kick full upon the shins of an iron fence-post,
which suffered little, though Penrod instantly regretted his
indiscretion. "Oof!" he grunted, hopping; and went on after bestowing a
look of awful hostility upon the fence-post.
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