“I hope Felix will beat,” said the Story Girl to me, “not only for the family honour, but because that was a mean, mean prayer of Peter’s. Do you think he will?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed dubiously. “Felix is too fat. He’ll get out of breath in no time. And Peter is such a cool customer, and he’s a year older than Felix. But then Felix has had some practice. He has fought boys in Toronto. And this is Peter’s first fight.”
“Did you ever fight?” asked the Story Girl.
“Once,” I said briefly, dreading the next question, which promptly came.
“Who beat?”
It is sometimes a bitter thing to tell the truth, especially to a young lady for whom you have a great admiration. I had a struggle with temptation in which I frankly confess I might have been worsted had it not been for a saving and timely remembrance of a certain resolution made on the day preceding Judgment Sunday.
“The other fellow,” I said with reluctant honesty.
“Well,” said the Story Girl, “I think it doesn’t matter whether you get whipped or not so long as you fight a good, square fight.”
Her potent voice made me feel that I was quite a hero after all, and the sting went out of my recollection of that old fight.
When we arrived behind the granary the others were all there. Cecily was very pale, and Felix and Peter were taking off their coats. There was a pure yellow sunset that evening, and the aisles of the fir wood were flooded with its radiance. A cool, autumnal wind was whistling among the dark boughs and scattering blood red leaves from the maple at the end of the granary.