The Battle of the Lamps
up jovially. "I think Adam Wayne made an uncommonly spirited little fight. And I think I am confoundedly sorry for him."
"Buck, you are a great man," cried Barker, rising also. "You've knocked me sensible again. I am ashamed to say it, but I was getting romantic. Of course, what you say is adamantine sense. Fighting, being physical, must be mathematical. We were beaten because we were neither mathematical nor physical nor anything else—because we deserved to be beaten. Hold all the approaches, and with our force we must have him. When shall we open the next campaign?"
"Now," said Buck, and walked out of the bar.
"Now!" cried Barker, following him eagerly. "Do you mean now? It is so late."
Buck turned on him, stamping.
"Do you think fighting is under the Factory Acts?" he said. And he called a cab. "Notting Hill Gate Station," he said, and the two drove off. ······
A genuine reputation can sometimes be made in an hour. Buck, in the next sixty or eighty minutes showed himself a really great man of action. His cab carried him like a thunder-
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