"Thanks," he said. "I'm not taking any this trip."
"Come on," urged Betty.
"I don't fight girls, thanks."
Betty began to cry in a heart-broken desperate way.
"It's not me," she said. "It's Cyril. It's Cyril. Oh, it's Cyril!"
But Brown, smiling darkly, turned from her, jumped over the fence, and took his way through the banana grove to his home.
And what pen could tell of his heaviness of heart, and great shame in that he had thrashed a girl. He could feel her light weight yet as he swung her round, hear her girlish voice crying, "We Bruces fight till we die!" see her thin white face in the moonlight as her hat fell off, and she looked at him and said—
"Come on, coward, bully!"
How he tingled with shame. Coward, bully! Yes, he had hit a girl.
Betty started for home at a brisk run, for during her adventure the night had advanced, and her imagination peopled the surrounding bush with bogeys, and imps and elves.