"Very well. Ask Mr. Spicer. I'm sorry for the chap; he meant well; and I admire his pluck."
"What did he do?"
"Got up and went for me bald-headed."
"And you knocked him down again?"
"No," said Theodore, "that time I knocked him out."
And he took a cigarette from his silver case, while Moya regarded him with almost as much admiration as disgust, and more of surprise than of either.
"I didn't know this was one of your accomplishments," said she at length.
"Aha!" puffed Theodore; "nor was it, once upon a time. But there's a certain old prize-fighter at a place called Trumpington, and he taught me the most useful thing I learnt up at Cambridge. The poetic justice of it is that I 'read' with him, so to speak, with a view to these very bush bullies and up-country larrikins. They're too free with their tongues when they're in a good temper, and with their fists when they're not. I suffered from them in early youth, Moya, but I don't fancy I shall suffer any more."
Moya was not so sure. She caught herself matching Theodore and another in her mind, and was not ashamed of the side she took. It made no difference to her own quarrel with the imaginary champion; nothing could or should alter that. But perhaps she had been ungenerous. He seemed to think so. She would show him she was neither ungenerous, nor a coward, before she was done. And after that the deluge.
Hereabouts Moya caught Theodore watching her, a penny for her thoughts in either eye. In an instant she had ceased being disingenuous with herself, and was hating him heartily for having triumphed over an adherent of Rigden, however mistaken; in another she was sharing that adherent's suspicions; in a third, expressing them.