Danny knew that he had been found out, and for a time he had little to say. But Bert was boy enough not to be able to keep altogether quiet over his discovery. From time to time he would ask Danny:
"Lost any more buttons, lately?"
"You let me alone!" Danny would reply, surlily.
Of course this made talk, the boys wanting to know what it meant, and at last the story came out. This made Danny so angry that he picked several quarrels with Bert. On his part Bert tried to avoid them, but at last he could stand it no longer, and he and Danny came to blows again, Danny striking first.
Bert had been brought up with the idea that fighting, unless it could absolutely be avoided, was not gentlemanly, but in this case he could not get out of it.
He and Danny went at each other with their fists clenched, a crowd of other boys looking on, and urging one or the other to do their best, for both Danny and Bert had friends, though Bert was the best liked.
Danny struck Bert several times, and Bert hit back, once hitting Danny in the eye. Bert's lip was cut, and when the fight was over both boys did not look very nice. But everyone said Bert had the best of it.
"Oh, Bert!" exclaimed his mother, when he came home after the trouble with Danny. "You've been fighting!"
"Yes, mother, I have," he admitted. "I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it. Danny Rugg hit me first. I couldn't run away, could I?"
It was a hard question for a mother to answer. No mother likes to think her son a coward, and that was what the boys would have called Bert had he not stood up to Danny.