"I will say it, and I do say it!"
"Then—take—that!"
The member of the military institute received a slap in the mouth from a masculine overgrown hand which caused him to measure the length of his spine backward on a large damask rose in the velvet carpet.
They fought as two young males should, one of whom had recently imagined himself the last of the Saxon kings and the other of whom had realized himself as an accepted lover. They fought for a moment over the priceless folio of Audubon and ruined those open pages where the robin, family-bird of the yards, had innocently brought on the fray. They fought round the room, past furniture and over it: Elsie following with delight and wishing that each would be well punished; Elizabeth following in despair, broken-hearted lest either should be worsted.
"The idea of two brats fighting over which is going to have the largest family!" cried the former.
"Oh, Harold, Harold, Harold!" implored Elizabeth. "To fight in your own house!"
"Where could I fight if I didn't fight in my own house?" shouted the Saxon. "I couldn't fight in his."
"Yes; you can fight in mine—whenever you've a mind!" shouted his hospitable foe.
Then something intervened—miraculously. The boys had reached the farther end of the library and the locked doors. There they had clinched again, and there they went down sidewise with a heavy fall against those barriers. As they started to their feet to close in again, the miracle took place—a real miracle, and most appropriate to Christmas Eve. In the Middle Ages such a miracle would have given rise to a legend, a saint, a shrine, and relics.
Elizabeth, who had hung upon the edge of battle, was the first to see it. As her brother rose, she threw herself upon him and whispered: