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536 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
CHAPTER XXXV
RES ANGUSTA DOMI
TO reconcile these two men was impossible, after such a quarrel
as that described in the last chapter. The only chance of
peace was to keep the two men apart. If they met, they
would fly at each other. Mugford always persisted that he could
have got the better of his great hulking sub-editor, who did not
know the use of his fists. In Mugford's youthful time, bruising
was a fashionable art ; and the old gentleman still believed in his
own skill and prowess. " Don't tell me," he would say ; " though
the fellar is as big as a life-guardsman, I would have doubled him
up in two minutes." I am very glad, for poor Charlotte's sake, and
his own, that Philip did not undergo the doubling-up process. He
himself felt such a wrath and surprise at his employer, as, I suppose,
a lion does when a little dog attacks him. I should not like
to be that little dog ; nor does my modest and peaceful nature at all
prompt and impel me to combat with lions.
It was mighty well Mr. Philip Firmin had shown his spirit,
and quarrelled with his bread-and-butter ; but when Saturday
came, what philanthropist would hand four sovereigns and four
shillings over to Mr. F., as Mr. Burjoyce, the publisher of the
Pall Mall Gazette, had been accustomed to do ? I will say for my
friend that a still keener remorse than that which he felt about
money thrown away attended him when he found that Mrs. Woolsey,
towards whom he had cast a sidelong stone of persecution, was a
most respectable and honourable lady. '* I should like to go, sir,
and grovel before her," Philip said, in his energetic way. " If I see
that tailor, I will request him to put his foot on my head, and
trample on me with his highlows. Oh, for shame! for shame!
shall I never learn charity towards my neighbours, and always go
on believing in the lies which people tell me ? When I meet that
scoundrel Trail at the club, I must chastise him. How dared he
take away the reputation of an honest woman ?" Philip's friends
besought him, for the sake of society and peace, not to carry this
quarrel farther. "If," we said, "every woman whom Trail has
maligned had a champion who should box Trail's ears at the club,