"I would not stand that from him!" exclaimed a voice from without, and the shadow of Pride, a beetle-browed, black-haired, ill-favoured lad, now darkened the doorway of Dick.
"I'll stand no impudence!" cried Dick in a passion, and, dashing with clenched fist up to Lubin, he knocked him down with a blow.
"Give it him well!" shouted Pride.
But Nelly rushed forward in haste, and threw herself between her two brothers. "Oh, don't, don't!" she cried in distress; "remember our mother, remember the love which we all should bear to one another! It was wrong in Lubin to laugh—but oh, please—please don't beat him any more."
"I'll beat him in another way!" exclaimed Dick, who was, perhaps, a little ashamed of having struck his younger brother; "I'll beat him at climbing this ladder,—one fall shall never daunt me!" and once more he ascended the steps, spelling without a single blunder, till, on the very topmost round, he waved his hand in triumph.
"I hope you're not hurt?" whispered Nelly to Lubin, who was slowly rising from the ground.
"You don't want her, do you, to cuddle and pet you as if you were a great big baby?" said Pride. "I wonder you don't go to your own cottage, and shut yourself up quietly there."
"I'll go and have nothing more to do with any of them," muttered Lubin, pushing Nelly aside, and leaving the cottage of Dick in a mood by no means amiable.
Nelly sighed; and as it appeared that she could at present be of no more use to her brothers, she quietly took her portion of Attention, and went to paper her own little room.