"If you don't take your impudent face out of this, I'll smash it for
you," spoke up the young man hotly.

The plumber's grin widened as, slinging his bag of tools over his
shoulder, he stepped on to the frozen towpath. "Ah, you're a
bruiser, I dare say: for I've seen you outside the booth at Lincoln
Fair, hail-fellow with the boxing-men on the platform. And a buck
you was too, with a girl on each arm; and might pass, that far from
home, for one of the gentry, the way you stood treat. But you're
not: and if missy ain't more particular in her bucks, she'd do better
with a respectable tradesman like me. As for smashing of faces, two
can play at that game, belike: but William Wright chooses his time."

He was lurching away with a guffaw; for the tow-path here ran within
two furlongs of the high road, and a man upon skates cannot pursue
across _terra firma_.

But he had reckoned without Hetty, who had seated herself on the edge
of the barge and who now shook her feet free of Johnny Whitelamb's
rough clamps, and, springing from the deck to the towpath, took him
by the collar as he turned.

"Go!" she cried, and with her open palm dealt him a stinging slap
across the cheek. "Go!"

The man put up his hand, fell back a moment with a dazed face, and
then without a word ran for the highway, his bag of tools rattling
behind him.

Never was route more ludicrously sudden. Even in her wrath Hetty