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“William, you’re a good boy,” Martin mocked, turning his back on Studs to leave the room.

“Can that wise stuff before you get your puss slapped!” Studs barked before he realized what he was saying.

“Oh, you will, will you!” Martin retorted with a voice of challenging sarcasm.

“Yes!” Studs said, hoping it would go no further, and instantly so tense that he was short of breath. Martin was getting too wise for his own health anyway, and sooner or later, for his own good, some of that sass would have to be slapped out of him.

Martin lip-farted.

“Think you’re tough and wise!” Studs said, moving around the table toward Martin, who stood by the hallway entry, sneering, nonchalant with his hands in his pockets.

“Tougher than you any day in the week.”

“Listen, can that crap while you’re all together!” Studs said, tempering his voice to give Martin an opening for dropping the quarrel.

“I’m all together and I’ll stay that way,” Martin loudly rasped.

“Boys! Boys!” Mrs. Lonigan called nervously from the kitchen.

“I’m telling you to cut it out.”

“Cut what out? Make me!”

Studs shoved Martin slightly, and he was rocked backward by a hard clip on the jaw. Martin went into him with two swinging fists, and Studs, surprised off-balance, slammed against a chair, which catapulted to the floor. Groping and grabbing under a rain of blows, he worked himself into the protection of a clinch.

“Come on, you has-been,” Martin sneered, freeing himself from Studs’ arms.

“Patrick!” Mrs. Lonigan screamed, rushing in from the kitchen.

“Yes,” he called from the parlor.

Another chair crashed. Martin freed himself from the clinch, and Studs drove up an uppercut. Martin grimaced and flailed into Studs. Breathing heavily, with no real heart for the fight, Studs took a stiff right on the jaw, a numbing sensation spread to his head, and he had a sickening headache.

“Pat, there’s a lot of snotty young punks these days whose talk is louder than their actions,” Martin said, curling his lips, pushing Studs back against the radiator, slamming him on the ear.

Mrs. Lonigan screamed shrilly, dropped to the floor like a sack.

His ear stung, hot with a buzzing sensation, and, impotently infuriated, Studs edged away from the radiator, knowing that he had used himself up. He tried to stall off by waving his left fist before him. Martin pounced down on him. A wild left punch grazed his jaw, and he clinched. Martin shoved him back, as if he were powerless. He knew that he was whipped, humiliatingly, and that he could not quit. Hatred flared in him, and again the nausea in his head, his pounding heart, jerking breath, tired arms and shoulders, stung ear, hurt jaw, his hatred and his will were vain. Martin was on him again. Studs strove to set himself in the in-fighting, grunted, maneuvered to work his shoulder up against Martin’s chin, and almost crumbled from a sharp pain as Martin smashed down with kidney punch.

“Cut it out!” Lonigan bellowed.

He saw Mrs. Lonigan, pallid and unconscious on the floor, and pointed. The sons, surprised by his command, followed his finger, staring helpless, guilty. The three of them converged over the prostrate Mrs. Lonigan.

“A fine thing to do to your mother.”

They sat Mrs. Lonigan on a chair and awkwardly revived her.

“Oh, God! Why do I deserve this? My own boys, my own flesh and blood, fighting under my sacred roof! Oh!”

Lonigan’s lips compressed: shaking his mortified head slowly from side to side, depressed more than angry.

“I’m ashamed of you boys,” he said, and neither of them dared look him in the eye.

“He was too wise,” Studs mumbled unconvincingly.

“I’m not being pushed around. He can’t even take a joke,” Martin stuttered.

“Hell of a way to take a joke, if you ask me, knocking each other all over the dining room.”

“He started it,” Martin said.

“I did like hell,” Studs flung back, his side stiff and hurt from the kidney punch, his breathing still too rapid.

“Come on, now, shake hands and call it quits!” Lonigan