"Bob," he said, "mother doesn't mean you're not to defend yourself. Understand? By fighting, mother only means beginning fights, picking fights, provoking other boys to fight. We have to defend ourselves. It isn't right to pick a fight; that's what mother means."
Bob saw tears come into his mother's eyes. Papa Jack saw them, too.
"There's only one way among boys, Helen
dear. The bullies must be fought, you know. Our boy's got to be a boy's boy if he's to be a man's man by-and-by."
Suddenly mother bent over and kissed Bob, and held him, with her arms thrust under and about him—held him hard.
"The only thing, Bob, is to be a man always. Be square and white. Do the right thing. I can't tell you what it will be every time; neither can anybody else: but you your own self will know. It may be right even to fight sometimes, for yourself and for others who are bullied; but every boy knows for himself when it's right and when it's wrong. If he does as he knows, he'll do right."
It was a quiet lunch that day. Father and mother talked little and the meal was quickly over. Bob hardly knew what he himself ate or did or thought. There was a strange excitement in his heart and in his head, a feeling that he could not define. It was not that he was going back to school after dinner. It was not that he would probably meet those boys again, nor that he would sooner or later have to face again that Curly Davis. Neither was it that, when he did face Curly Davis, he meant to—yes, to fight him. No, it was none of these things, though his heart did beat the faster as he thought of them. It was something else; it was something about what his father had said, not so much his words, but the way he had said "a man's man" and "we must defend ourselves"—something that thrilled him, made him proud and humble, all at once. Someway, father seemed to have taken a new attitude toward him, and in that change even Bob seemed to see father's recognition that babyhood was over for his small son.
Mother stood in the door and watched him go. She had been crying again, a little; she had even wanted to keep him at home. But father had said, "No, let him go; as well now as to-morrow," and so she had kissed him and cried again, a little. And then she had begged him to "try to keep away from those bad little boys," and to "play only with good boys who did not want to fight"; and Bob had said yes—doubtfully. He waved his hand to her from the gate, and again from the corner of the block, and then he set his face once more toward school, and walked very fast.
It was five o'clock when Bob came home again. School closed at four, but the clock on the library mantel was tinkling five when he opened the door and closed it very softly. He didn't want mother to see him just then.
He was trembling and very white—his little mirror by the window showed him that. There was a brown-and-blue bruise just in the corner of his little brown eyebrow, of which he had felt carefully a dozen times on the way home, but which did not look so big in the glass as it had felt. There was a rubbed place on his chin, and the soft knuckles of his hands were grimy and stained. He laid his school-bag and box carefully on a chair, and went to look out the window for a moment. And then a strange feeling came over him.