ROBERTS: 'Oh yes, do go, Edward! Not but what I should be
proud and happy to have you appear just as you are before the whole
world, if it was only to put Willis down with his jokes about your
absent-mindedness, and his boasts about those California desperadoes
of his.'
ROBERTS: 'Come, come, Agnes! I MUST protest against your--'
MRS. ROBERTS: 'Oh, I know it doesn't become me to praise your
courage, darling! But I should like to know what Willis would have
done, with all his California experience, if a garotter had taken
his watch?'
WILLIS: 'I should have let him keep it, and pay five dollars a
quarter himself for getting it cleaned and spoiled. Anybody but a
literary man would. How many of them were there, Roberts?'
ROBERTS: 'I only saw one.'
MRS. ROBERTS: 'But of course there were more. How could he tell,
in the dark and excitement? And the one he did see was a perfect
giant; so you can imagine what the rest must have been like.'
WILLIS: 'Did you really knock him down?'
MRS. ROBERTS: 'Knock him down? Of course he did.'
MRS. CRASHAW: 'Agnes, WILL you hold your tongue, and let the men
alone?'
MRS. ROBERTS, whimpering: 'I can't, Aunt Mary. And you couldn't,
if it was yours.'
ROBERTS: 'I pulled him over backwards.'
MRS. ROBERTS: 'There, Willis!'
WILLIS: 'And grabbed your watch from him?'
ROBERTS: 'I was in quite a frenzy; I really hardly knew what I was
doing--'
MRS.
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