Lavender's white hair and words that he was not the Objector
in question, they advanced upon the young man, who was still seated,
and taking up the four points of the compass, began squirting him
unmercifully with soda-water. Blinded and dripping, the unfortunate
young fellow tried desperately to elude the cordon of his persecutors,
only to receive a fresh stream in his face at each attempt. Seeing
him thus tormented, amid the coarse laughter of these half-drunken
"travellers," Mr. Lavender suffered a moment of the most poignant
struggle between his principles and his chivalry. Then, almost
unconsciously grasping the ham-bone, he advanced and called out loudly:
"Stop! Do not persecute that young man. You are four and he is one. Drop
it, I tell you--Huns that you are!"
The commercial fellows, however, laughed; and this infuriating Mr.
Lavender, he dealt one of them a blow with the ham-bone, which, lighting
on the funny point of his elbow, caused him to howl and spin round the
room. One of the others promptly avenged him with a squirt of syphon
in Mr. Lavender's left eye; whereon he incontinently attacked them all,
whirling the ham-bone round his head like a shillelagh. And had it not
been that Blink and the maid seized his coat-tails he would have done
them severe injury.
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