School over, the boys could not help meeting. Their roads lay together, and both had too much self-respect to wish to make an exhibition of the want of good feeling between them to the other boys. So they set off as if nothing were the matter, and walked some little way in silence. At last Ted could stand it no longer.
"What's the matter with you, old fellow?" he said. "Why wouldn't you play with me yesterday?"
Rex looked up.
"I couldn't," he said. "I had got my French exercise all blotted, and I wanted to copy it over without telling any one; that was why I wouldn't come out. So now you see if it was true what you said of me to Hatchard."
"What did I say of you to Hatchard?" cried Ted.
"What? Why, what he told me you said—that I was a mean sneak, and that I wouldn't play because I wasn't as good at it as you."
"I never said so, and you know I never did," retorted Ted, his cheeks flaming.
"Do you mean to say that I'm telling a lie?" cried Rex in his turn.
"Yes I do, if you said I said that," exclaimed Ted. And then—how it happened I don't think either of the boys could have told—their anger grew from words into deeds. Rex hit Ted, and Ted hit at him again! But one blow—one on each side—and they came to their senses. Ted first, when he saw the ugly mark his clenched fist had left on his friend's face, when he felt the hot glow on his own.
"O Rex," he cried, "O Rex! How can we be like that to each other? It's like Cain and Abel. O Rex, I'm so sorry!"