this back. From what she said I dunno as it
would do any good, but I thought, perhaps, if you were going to take
Regan's advice about talking to your wife, you and Mrs. Beezer might
like to look it over again together before you----"

That was as far as Pudgy MacAllister got. Generally speaking, the more
steam there is to the square inch buckled down under the valve, the
shriller the whistle is when it breaks loose. Beezer let a noise out
of him that sounded like a green parrot complaining of indigestion, and
went at MacAllister head-on.

The oil can sailed through the air and crashed into the window glass of
Clarihue's cubby-hole in the corner. There was a tangled and revolving
chaos of arms and legs, and lean and fat bodies. Then a thud. There
wasn't any professional ring work about it. They landed on the floor
and began to roll--and a pail of packing and black oil they knocked
over greased the way.

There was some racket about it, and Regan heard it; so did Clarihue,
and MacAllister's fireman, and another engine crew or two, and a couple
of wipers. The rush reached the combatants when there wasn't more than
a scant thirty-second of an inch between them and the edge of an empty
pit--but a thirty-second is a whole lot sometimes.

When they stood them up and got them uncoupled, MacAllister's black eye
was modestly toned down with a generous share of what had been in the
packing bucket, but his fist still clutched a handful of hair that he
had separated from Beezer's beard--and Beezer's eyes were running like
hydrants from the barbering. Take it all around, thanks mostly to the
packing bucket, they were a fancy enough looking pair to send a
high-class team of professional comedians streaking for the sidings all
along the right of way to get out of their road.

It doesn't take very much, after all, to make trouble, not very much;
and, once started, it's worse than the measles--the way it spreads.

Mostly, they guyed Pudgy MacAllister at first; they liked his make-up
better owing to the black eye. But Pudgy was both generous and modest;
what applause there was coming from the audience he wanted Beezer to
get--he wasn't playing the "lead."

And Beezer got it. Pudgy opened up a bit, and maybe drew on his
imagination a bit about what Mrs. Beezer had said to Mrs. MacAllister
about Jimmy Beezer, and what Beezer had said to Regan, and Regan to
Beezer, not forgetting Regan's remark about the horse doctor.

Oh,