“Perhaps he was not wholly to blame,” interrupted Zadia, generously. “Even though Dolph is my brother, I know he is not perfect.”
“I think he’s perfectly splendid,” smiled Dora; “and I know Don Scott must have been to blame, for he always is. So there!”
“I shall tell Dolph that you were his champion.”
“Oh, don’t—not for the world! But I don’t like Don Scott; I never did. He scowls so, and he looks as if he’d bite anybody.”
“Now,” said Zadia, with a little laugh, “if I were to confess the truth, I’d tell you that I think him a handsome fellow—really and truly I do! Ana he looks the handsomest when he is angry. I don’t believe he’d be afraid of anything, and I’m sure he’d become a natural leader if he could master his temper.”
“Goodness, Zade!” cried Dora. “I really believe you are struck on him!”
“Oh, no!” protested Dolph’s sister, though she flushed betrayingly. “But I can’t help liking him, for some reason.”
Little did Don dream how the sister of the lad he so disliked felt toward him, and he was convinced in his heart that she must despise him, which, although he would not confess it even to himself, made him all the bitterer.
Concealed by a thick hedge near his home, he saw the boys trooping down the street from the football field, chatting and laughing. They seemed to have forgotten about him, and he clenched his hands and ground his heel into the ground as if crushing out a life beneath his foot.
“They’re a lot of soft things!” he muttered. “Not one of them has a mind of his own or any real spirit. I despise them all!”