Denman turned white as he answered:
"Do you want me to report your opinion to my father and Mr. Bland?"
"Oh, you would, would you? And take from me the alternate, too! Well, you're a cur, Bill Denman. Go ahead and report."
They were now on a block bounded by vacant lots, and no one was within sight. Denman stopped, threw off his coat, and said:
"No, I'll not report your opinion, but—you square yourself, Jack Forsythe, and I'll show you the kind of cur I am."
Forsythe turned, saw the anger in Denman's eyes, and promptly shed his coat.
It was a short fight, of one round only. Each fought courageously, and with such fistic skill as schoolboys acquire, and each was equal to the other in strength; but one possessed about an inch longer reach than the other, which decided the battle.
Denman, with nose bleeding and both eyes closing, went down at last, and could not arise, nor even see the necessity of rising. But soon his brain cleared, and he staggered to his feet, his head throbbing viciously and his face and clothing smeared with blood from his nose, to see between puffed eyelids the erect figure of Forsythe swaggering around a distant corner. He stanched the blood with his handkerchief, but as there was not a brook, a ditch, or a puddle in the neighborhood, he could only go home as he was, trusting that he would meet no one.
"Licked!" he muttered. "For the first time in my life, too! What'll the old gentleman and mother say?"
What the father and mother might say, or what they did say, has no part in this story; but what another person said may have a place and value, and will be given here. This person was the only one he met before reaching home—a very small person, about thirteen years old, with big gray eyes and long dark ringlets, who ran across the street to look at him.