He remembered his promise to Guy, if ever he got the opportunity. "Boys can stand a good deal of cruelty, ma'am. Nine times out of ten it does them good."
"Still there's always a tenth case."
He smiled. "I think I ought to have made it ten times out of ten. I never saw the boy yet who wasn't all the better for fighting his way along."
Mrs. Ansley's mouth screwed itself up like Guy's when it looked as if he were going to cry. "Fight? Why, I think fighting's something horrid. Why can't boys treat each other like gentlemen?"
"I suppose, ma'am, because they're not gentlemen."
The cornstarch pudding stiffened to the firmness of ice-cream. "Excuse me! My boy couldn't be anything but a gentleman."
"He couldn't be anything but a sport. He is a fighter, ma'am—when he gets the chance."
"Then I hope he won't often get it."
"But, Sunshine," Mr. Ansley intervened, "you don't make any allowance for differences in standards. You're a woman of forty-five. Guy's a boy of sixteen—he's practically seventeen, like Whitelaw here—your name is Whitelaw, isn't it?—and yet you want him to have the same tastes and ways as yourself."
"I don't want him to have brutal tastes and ways."