"Hold your tongue, you ——!"
"Oh!" cried Janet.
Leonard vaulted across the table, grasped his brother's collar, and struck him on the side of the head. Nigel loosed his grip of Janet, and turned to close with Len, who was, however, much the better man of the two. He forced Nigel down on the table, and proceeded to punish him with all his might.
"Apologise, you brute ... beg her pardon on your knees," he shouted.
Nigel did not speak—his lips were tight shut, a thin red streak in the whiteness of his face.
"Len ... stop!—you'll kill him!" cried Janet. She stood petrified, trembling from head to foot. Never in her whole life had she witnessed such a scene in the Furlonger family. The boys were fighting. She had seen them spar before, but never anything like this. And Nigel's drunkenness ... and his words to her ... a sickly, stifling horror crept up her throat and nearly choked her.
"Len—stop!—he's had enough."
"Not till he apologises—apologise, you damn brute!"
Nigel's teeth were set. He struggled mechanically, Len had hold of his right wrist, and his left hand was bent under him. Suddenly, however, he managed to wrench them both free—the next minute he seized his brother's throat. For a moment or two they struggled desperately, Leonard half strangled, and in the end Nigel rolled off the table to the floor, where both young men lay together.