"You are decided, then, not to comply with my request--a request made
according to common usage and common sense?"

He briefly gave me to understand that on that point my judgment was
sound. Yes: his decision was irreversible.

It is not seldom the case that when a man is browbeaten in some
unprecedented and violently unreasonable way, he begins to stagger in
his own plainest faith. He begins, as it were, vaguely to surmise that,
wonderful as it may be, all the justice and all the reason is on the
other side. Accordingly, if any disinterested persons are present, he
turns to them for some reinforcement for his own faltering mind.

"Turkey," said I, "what do you think of this? Am I not right?"

"With submission, sir," said Turkey, with his blandest tone, "I think
that you are."

"Nippers," said I, "what do _you_ think of it?"

"I think I should kick him out of the office."

(The reader of nice perceptions will here perceive that, it being
morning, Turkey's answer is couched in polite and tranquil terms, but
Nippers replies in ill-tempered ones. Or, to repeat a previous
sentence, Nippers' ugly mood was on duty and Turkey's off.)

"Ginger Nut," said I, willing to enlist the smallest suffrage in my
behalf, "what do you think of it?"