“What will you do?”
“Come and pound you! That is, if you can’t get off your old lounge!”
“Come on!” sneered Melville, little dreaming that his menace would be accepted.
But it was; and in another second the round, dirty fists of little Fritz were beating and punching the face and sides of the really helpless invalid. Melville defended himself as best he could, and cried aloud for his grandmother. But that unsuspecting woman was taking her evening constitutional at a good distance from the house, and did not hear him.
As he saw his adversary evidently weakening the belligerent Fritz felt his courage grow apace, and he became quite carried away with his own prowess.
But after a considerable interval, he realized that his blows were no longer parried, and that Melville’s claw-like hands lay supinely on the robe which half covered him.
“Humph! Thought I couldn’t lick you, didn’t you? And I showed you diffrunt! Humph! Got enough, haven’t you?” And with immeasurable contempt Fritz stepped back and regarded the motionless figure upon the lounge. He stood thus for a long, long time; then suddenly the memory of a story his uncle had told him of a boy who killed his brother in a “fight” rushed into his mind.
Had he killed this boy of the roaring voice? A quick little sob escaped his babyish lips, and in an awful terror he turned and fled.
They were just rising from their long, after table talk when the door of the supper-room opened furiously, and a small boy with a very white face appeared on its threshold. The big, staring eyes and the quivering lips did not seem to belong to their little Fritz, and every one paused in expectation, as he cried in his terrified treble: “There’s a homely, great boy on a lounge, and I’ve just killed him!”