"He has been fighting," she said quietly, "and I fear he has had the worst of it."
"That I didn't," the belligerent one exclaimed joyously. "I'd have killed him quite dead if Guardie hadn't stopped me. He wouldn't let me."
"Who was it?" Miss Esperance asked with breathless interest.
"Jamie Broun; he was rude. His father makes wheels and things, you know."
"Come and get cleaned, my dear, dear boy. It's very wrong to fight, but sometimes—in a good cause, it maybe necessary. Come away in."
And Miss Esperance walked up the garden path with her arm round Montagu's neck.
Presently she tapped at Mr. Wycherly's door. When she came in her gentle face was wreathed with smiles.
"I've just come to confess to you," she said, "that I feel you were right and I was wrong last night. There is no doubt whatever that Montagu is a real Bethune. In 1657 Archibald Bethune did with his own hands choke to death an Irish wrestler who had set upon him in a lonely inn in Forfarshire. The man was seven feet high, so the old chronicle says. I've just been looking."
"Won't you sit down, Miss Esperance?"
"No, I thank you, not now. I have several things to see to; but, dear friend, I felt that I must tell you that I recognise that your insight is deeper than mine. Montagu is a true Bethune: he will be a man of his hands even as the rest of our house."