“How dare he insult me like that! I don’t care if he half-kills me; but I won’t bear it.”
“Yes, you will,” said Glyn, “like a man.”
“Like a coward, you mean.”
“No, I don’t. I am not going to have you knocked about just because a low bully abuses you.”
“Well, will you go and thrash him yourself?”
“No. I have whipped the cur once, and I am not going to lower myself by fighting again because in his spite he turned and barked at us. I could do it again, and I feel just in the humour; but what does it mean? Black eyes and bruises, and the skin off one’s knuckles, and a nasty feeling that one has degraded one’s self into fighting a blackguard, for that’s what he is, or he wouldn’t have insulted you as he did just now.—Come away.”
“Oh, I didn’t think you were such a coward, Glyn.”
“And you don’t think so now,” replied Glyn coolly. “You are in a regular rage, and that’s just the difference between you Indian fellows and an Englishman. You begin going off like a firework.”
“Yes, and you go off as if you had had cold water poured on you.”
“Very likely,” replied Glyn. “There, we are both hot now. Let’s try and cool down. I don’t care whether it seems cowardly or whether it doesn’t; but I am not going to get up a fight and make an exhibition of myself for the other fellows to see. Once was quite enough; and perhaps after all it’s harder work to bear a thing like this than to go over yonder and punch old Slegge’s head and have it out.”