“Make him fight you. Challenge him,” said Jones. “Invite him to the milling-ground behind the chapel after first school to-morrow morning.”
“Pistols for two, coffee for four, at eight to-morrow,” said Henderson. “Trample on the Dragon’s tail, someone, and rouse him to the occasion. What! he won’t come to the scratch? Alack! alack!
“‘What can ennoble fools or cowards
Not all the blood of all the Tracys, Dragons, and Howards!’”
He continued mischievously, as he saw that Tracy, on taking note of Walter’s compact figure, showed signs of declining the combat.
“Hush, Henderson,” said Kenrick, one of the group who had taken no part in the talk; “it’s a shame to be setting two new fellows fighting their first evening.”
But Henderson’s last remark had been too much for Tracy. “Will you fight?” he said, walking up to Walter with reddening cheeks. For Tracy had been to school before, and was no novice in the ways of boys.
“Certainly not,” said Walter coolly, to everybody’s great surprise.
“What! the other chap showing the white feather, too. All the new fellows are cowards it seems this time,” said Jones. “This’ll never do. Pitch into him, Tracy.”
“Stop,” said Kenrick; “let’s hear first why he won’t fight?”
“Because I see no occasion to,” said Walter; “and because, in the second place, I never could fight in cold blood; and because, in the third place—”