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considerable force into the region of Mr. Rusper's midriff. Whereupon
Mr. Rusper, with a loud impassioned cry, resembling "Woo kik" more
than any other combination of letters, released the bicycle handle,
seized Mr. Polly by the cap and hair and bore his head and shoulders
downward. Thereat Mr. Polly, emitting such words as everyone knows and
nobody prints, butted his utmost into the concavity of Mr. Rusper,
entwined a leg about him and after terrific moments of swaying
instability, fell headlong beneath him amidst the bicycles and pails.
There on the pavement these inexpert children of a pacific age,
untrained in arms and uninured to violence, abandoned themselves to
amateurish and absurd efforts to hurt and injure one another--of which
the most palpable consequences were dusty backs, ruffled hair and torn
and twisted collars. Mr. Polly, by accident, got his finger into Mr.
Rusper's mouth, and strove earnestly for some time to prolong that
aperture in the direction of Mr. Rusper's ear before it occurred to
Mr. Rusper to bite him (and even then he didn't bite very hard), while
Mr. Rusper concentrated his mind almost entirely on an effort to rub
Mr. Polly's face on the pavement. (And their positions bristled with
chances of the deadliest sort!) They didn't from first to last draw
blood.
Then it seemed to each of them that the other had become endowed with
many hands and several voices and great accessions of strength. They
submitted to fate and ceased to struggle. They found themselves torn
apart and held up by outwardly scandalised and inwardly delighted
neighbours, and invited to explain what it was all about.
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