So curt a rejoinder made Lenny's blood fly to his face. Persuaded before
that the intruder was some lawless apprentice or shop-lad, he was now
more confirmed in that judgment, not only by language so uncivil, but by
the truculent glance which accompanied it, and which certainly did not
derive any imposing dignity from the mutilated, rakish, hang-dog, ruinous
hat, under which it shot its sullen and menacing fire.

Of all the various articles of which our male attire is composed, there
is perhaps not one which has so much character and expression as the top
covering. A neat, well-brushed, short-napped, gentlemanlike hat, put on
with a certain air, gives a distinction and respectability to the whole
exterior; whereas, a broken, squashed, higgledy-piggledy sort of a hat,
such as Randal Leslie had on, would go far towards transforming the
stateliest gentleman who ever walked down St. James's Street into the
ideal of a ruffianly scamp.

Now, it is well known that there is nothing more antipathetic to your
peasant-boy than a shop-boy. Even on grand political occasions, the
rural working-class can rarely be coaxed into sympathy with the trading
town class. Your true English peasant is always an aristocrat.
Moreover, and irrespectively of this immemorial grudge of class, there is
something peculiarly hostile in the relationship between boy and boy when
their backs are once up, and they are alone on a quiet bit of green,--
something of the game-cock feeling; something that tends to keep alive,
in the population of this island (otherwise so lamblike and peaceful),
the martial propensity to double the thumb tightly over the four fingers,
and make what is called "a fist of it." Dangerous symptoms of these
mingled and aggressive sentiments were visible in Lenny Fairfield at the
words and the look of the unprepossessing stranger. And the stranger