"Oh, Gibson!" Joel flew after her and twitched her apron string.
"What is it?" She turned on him with asperity. "I never will upset the mucilage bottle again, I won't, Gibson, really."
"See that you don't," replied Gibson, moving off with small faith in such promises.
And another promise had that very evening been made, just before the boys had gathered in Mrs. Sterling's handsome sitting-room.
Curtis Park had been through several spasms of distress over his attack on Jack, when, whirling around from the friendly attitude he had chosen to assume, he had made a tirade on the grocer's son. Look at it whichever way he might, it didn't seem pleasant to view. And all the delight in the fire and the companionship of Mr. Dyce, of whom all the boys were exceedingly fond, was suddenly blotted out. He went home that night, and crept into bed, a most disconsolate boy.
"I was a beastly cad," he fumed, kicking the covering down to the foot, and rolling out with the vain attempt to find some diversion. But that being impossible, he tumbled in again, with his unhappy thoughts.
And all through the following days, go whichever way he might, there was the fact to stare him in the face, that he, Curtis Park, who had hitherto prided himself upon his fine manners, had dropped from his height, to blackguard a boy, who, despite the fact of having been born the son of a little grocer on Common Street, had yet shown himself capable of the height.
"It's no use to deny it. I've been a bully and a cad," he groaned, and wiped the perspiration from his face. "What can I do!"
There was only one way, and he knew it, just as well at first as after all the fencing with himself that ensued the next few days. And at last on this very evening, he stopped fighting the idea, and marched up to what it suggested, like a man.
"See here, will you, though I shouldn't think you'd want to speak to me." It was a boy who said this to Jack standing on the step of the grocer's front door, next to the shop.