"Well, he is bound to do so, after what happened yesterday. I do not see how he can help it, or how you can avoid it. You will have to fight him, Rexworth."
"I am sorry to hear you say that, for I don't want to be fighting if I can help it, and I would far rather be friends with——" He paused. He was going to say "friends with him." But that was not true. He felt that, apart from anything which had happened yesterday, he could not be friends with the son of a man who had said that his father was a thief.
"I don't want to fight him," he said slowly; and Warren nodded.
"I know; but if he challenges you, what then?"
Ralph looked grave. No boy likes to be thought a coward; but still he did not want to fight.
"If I can get out of it I shall," he said: and the monitor looked just a trifle disappointed, while one or two of the boys laughed.
"It is not that I am afraid of him," Ralph said hastily. "It is that I don't want to begin fighting, if I can avoid it."
"For goodness' sake, then, keep out of his way, and don't let him get to know that, for if Elgert thinks that he can do it without the chance of a row following, he is bound to challenge you. He is bound to, anyhow, so far as I can see, and it won't be nice for a fellow in the Fourth to refuse a challenge from the Fifth. If it was one of the youngsters in the Third, it would be different. No one would say that we were frightened to fight them; but in the Fifth they are bound to say that it was fear, and—— Hurry up, you chaps, there is the bell going!"
A scamper, fast as they could go, and they trooped in to breakfast, so hungry, spite of cake and milk, that not even the troubled question of the probable challenge could disturb their appetites. Only Warren looked across to where Horace Elgert sat, and he muttered to himself—