"Fine talking, indeed!" rejoined Tom, tauntingly. "I know very well the reason why you will not strike me again. You dare not, because I am the biggest and strongest. You are afraid of me."
Now Ned was no coward. He would have fought in a good cause with a boy twice his size; and he was very much provoked at the words and manner of his companion.
He had a hard struggle with himself not to return the blow; but he kept firm to the good resolution he had made, and went away.
As he was returning home very sorrowful, he could not help thinking how happy he had expected to be that evening; and he regretted extremely that his grandmother would have no cloak to keep her warm in the cold weather. Still, the recollection that he had patiently borne the blow and insulting speeches of Tom, and thus endeavoured to put in practice the good precepts he had been taught, consoled him, and made him feel less sad than he would otherwise have been.
"How did you get that black eye, Ned?" asked his grandmother, as soon as she saw him. "I hope you have not been fighting."
"No, grandmother, indeed I have not," replied Ned; and he told her how it had happened.
His grandmother said that he was a good boy to have acted as he did, and added, "It makes me happier to find that you behave well, than twenty new cloaks would."
The next day, at dinner time, when Ned went into the little outhouse where he and Tom usually ate this meal, he found Tom sitting there crying.
"What makes you cry, Tom?" inquired Ned.
"Because I have no dinner," was the reply.