“I wouldn’t like to be such a silly,” he added.
“It’s a great pity that you don’t try in a kind way to make him braver,” said Fay, severely. “Yesterday, for instance, when he was so afraid of being struck by the cricket ball, instead of telling him that it would be sure to break his legs, it would have been much kind——”
“Preachey, preachey,” broke in Hubert, so rudely that Phil, who joined the party at that moment, promptly fell on him.
“Look here, you’re getting too cheeky,” he declared, with a warning shake: “we shall have to court-martial you. How dare you speak like that to Fay? How dare you, you young monkey?”
“I dare what I choose,” retorted the young culprit, defiantly.
Hubert’s fearlessness in the face of chastisement always appealed powerfully to his big brothers’ admiration, so that however much they might threaten him with a “jolly good licking,” neither Jack nor Phil would ever have carried out their threat on the small boy, whose pluck was their favourite boast at school.
“You may beat me to death if you like,” Hubert proceeded to observe.
“What’s up now?” enquired Jack, who came to see what was going on.
Faith rehearsed what had taken place.
“Well, I must say Gaston is an awful little muff,” said Jack; “still I suppose we’ve got to be kind to him, so look here, Hubert. First of all, go and tell Faith that you’re sorry for having been rude to her.”