“Here, I say,” cried Slegge, with a most perfect assumption of innocence; and he looked round as if speaking to a whole gathering of their schoolfellows, “what’s he talking about? I don’t know. Isn’t going off his head, is he?”
“That letter the Doctor was talking about yesterday morning,” cried Glyn, with the passion within beginning to master him.
“Here, I don’t know what you mean,” cried Slegge. “You seem to have got out of bed upside down, or else you haven’t woke up yet. What do you mean by your letters?”
“You miserable shuffler!” cried Glyn, in a voice almost inaudible from rage. “The Doctor only talked about a letter; but I’ve found you out.”
“No, you haven’t,” cried Slegge truculently; “you have found me in—in here by the gardens, and if you have come down here to have it out once more before breakfast, come along down to the elms. I am your man.”
“That’s just what I should like to do,” panted Severn, whose hands kept opening and shutting as they hung by his sides; and there was something in the boy’s looks that made Slegge change colour slightly, and he glanced quickly to right and left as if in search of the support of his fellows; but there was no one within sight.
“But,” continued Glyn, “if you think I am going to lower myself by fighting a dirty, cowardly hound who has struck at me behind the back like the dishonourable cur that the Doctor said he was waiting to see come and confess what he had done, you are mistaken.”
“There, I knew it!” cried Slegge. “You are afraid. Put up your hands, or I will give you the coward’s blow.”
To the bully’s utter astonishment, one of Glyn’s hands only rose quick as lightning and had him by the throat.
“You dare!” he cried. “Strike me if you dare! Yes, it would be a coward’s blow. But if you do I won’t answer for what will happen, for I shall forget what you have done, and—and—”