"I'm not so sure that he meant us to fight," he said. "He—he never asked me to."
"What did he say?"
"He only said something about a challenge and things."
"Oh," said Betty, eager again in a minute; "if he said 'challenge' you must fight. There's no get out."
"But I've hurt my leg."
"Oh never mind your leg—think of the honour of the Bruces!" said the fervent Betty, who regarded the family cognomen as something sacred and against which no breath of evil must be allowed to come.
"Honour of the Bruces be hanged, if I'm lame," said Cyril savagely.
A sense of foreboding swept over Betty as she followed Cyril into the house. Her imagination showed her willows and the "coral islands," and only John Brown—big square John Brown—there. She knew the story that would soon be all over the school—all over the neighbourhood—that Cyril had been afraid to fight. Of course she, Betty, his own twin sister, knew there would not be a grain of truth in it. She knew he was shy and delicate, and had hurt his leg. But for all that, she wished eagerly that he were not shy and delicate, and did not always have some bodily ill when fighting time came. And more than one sob shook her, for she beheld the honour of the Bruces being trampled under John Brown's big boots.
She set the table and went about her usual household tasks in a very half-hearted way. Cyril would not look at her, and crept off to bed at six o'clock, complaining of the pain in his leg. Tea was over by then, and Betty, with her woeful look still on her face was helping "wash up" in the kitchen.
Cyril in his bedroom turned down his stocking and examined the little blue bruise near his knee. That there was some outward and visible sign of his hurt he was very thankful. It raised his self-respect and brought tears of self-pity to his eyes, that Betty should have expected him to fight under such circumstances! So much did the sight of his wound upset him that he only went on one leg while undressing, though it must be confessed it was not always the same leg that did the hopping.