It is a lamentable fact, hinted at in the outset of this history, that these heroes quarreled occasionally. When one of these differences took place, each one had the strange, boyish habit of calling the other by his christian name and surname. If you doubt this, fair reader, [she for whom this is written will understand,] be so good as to play the eavesdropper on two small and quarrelsome juveniles disputing about the color of an absent playmate’s marble.
“I’m not; I’m keeping my word;” Steve replied seriously. “But perhaps your mind is running on clemency, that bothered you so much the other day.”
“Perhaps yours is running on the term ‘Lynch law!’”
At this juncture neutral Marmaduke, who was beginning to recover his equanimity, and who doubtless felt spiteful towards Stephen, hopped up and declared, in the tone of a dictator rather than of a peacemaker: “Gentlemen, the jury have disagreed; the case is dismissed.”
“Marmaduke Fitzwilliams,” cried Charles, rising in his turn, “four or five boys don’t make a jury; you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Lawyers would say, constitute a jury,” Marmaduke corrected.
“Well, let ’em say it; we are not lawyers;” Charles roared.
“It would not be acting politically to punish him ourselves,” the neutral one contended. “There is a whole court-house full of men in the village, that make it a business to punish people.”
Poor Marmaduke! He seemed to have a preternatural longing to figure in the courts of justice.
“Marmaduke,” George said musingly, “don’t you suppose you are out of your reckoning when you say ‘acting politically’?”