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“It seems to me it’s your wife that’s done the insulting!” answered Markey crisply.”In fact, your baby there started all the trouble.”

John gave a contemptuous snort.”Are you calling names at a little baby?” he inquired.”That’s a fine manly business!”

“Don’t talk to him, John,” insisted Edith.”Find my coat!”

“You must be in a bad way,” went on John angrily, “if you have to take out your temper on a helpless little baby.”

“I never heard anything so damn twisted in my life,” shouted Markey.”If that wife of yours would shut her mouth for a minute –“

“Wait a minute! You’re not talking to a woman and child now –“

There was an incidental interruption. Edith had been fumbling on a chair for her coat, and Mrs. Markey had been
watching her with hot, angry eyes. Suddenly she laid Billy down on the sofa, where he immediately stopped crying and pulled himself upright, and coming into the hall she quickly found Edith’s coat and handed it to her without a word. Then she went back to the sofa, picked up Billy, and rocking him in her arms looked again at Edith with hot, angry eyes. The interruption had taken less than half a minute.

“Your wife comes in here and begins shouting around about how common we are!” burst out Markey violently.”Well, if we’re so damn common, you’d better stay away! And, what’s more, you’d better get out now!”

Again John gave a short, contemptuous laugh.

“You’re not only common,” he returned, “you’re evidently an awful bully — when there’s any helpless women and children around.” He felt for the knob and swung the door open.”Come on, Edith.”

Taking up her daughter in her arms, his wife stepped outside and John, still looking contemptuously at Markey, started to follow.

“Wait a minute!” Markey took a step forward; he was trembling slightly, and two large veins on his temple were suddenly full of blood.”You don’t think you can get away with that, do you? With me?”

Without a word John walked out the door, leaving it open.

Edith, still weeping, had started for home. After following her with his eyes until she reached her own walk, John turned back toward the lighted doorway where Markey was slowly coming down the slippery steps. He took off his overcoat and hat, tossed them off the path onto the snow. Then, sliding a little on the iced walk, he took a step forward.

At the first blow, they both slipped and fell heavily to the sidewalk, half rising then, and again pulling each other to the ground. They found a better foothold in the thin snow to the side of the walk and rushed at each other, both swinging wildly and pressing out the snow into a pasty mud underfoot.

The street was deserted, and except for their short tired gasps and the padded sound as one or the other slipped down into the slushy mud, they fought in silence, clearly defined to each other by the full moonlight as well as by the amber glow that shone out of the open door. Several times they both slipped down together, and then for a while the conflict threshed about wildly on the lawn.

For ten, fifteen, twenty minutes they fought there senselessly in the moonlight. They had both taken off coats and vests at some silently agreed upon interval and now their shirts dripped from their backs in wet pulpy shreds. Both were torn and bleeding and so exhausted that they could stand only when by their position they mutually supported each other — the impact, the mere effort of a blow, would send them both to their hands and knees.