"They should have come along; it's their own fault they got left."
"But the fathers and mothers aren't to blame," insisted St. George vehemently. "Yours would go most crazy if you didn't turn up at the right time."
Phipps, however, was not to allow his feelings to be worked upon in this way. He now found himself very cold, decidedly hungry, and violently cross, and, giving St. George a push, he declared, "I tell you I won't do a single thing, nor take a single step. I can't hardly move, and I shall go straight home."
"Of course," said St. George, brightening up, and relaxing a bit, "so shall I, to tell my folks."
"I shall stay there," said Phipps obstinately. With that he turned again to the window.
"Do!" burst out St. George in high scorn, "and save your stingy, mean, little pinched-up carcass!"
"Boys," said an old gentleman back of them, leaning forward to bring his stern face over into the excitement, "I should think if you must fight, you could find some other place a little more appropriate than a crowded rail-car."
St. George brought his flushed face over against that of the old gentleman, and sprang to his feet, reaching for the skates dangling from the rack overhead, while he shivered all over with anger and mortification. Phipps did not turn his head.
The old gentleman seeing that his shaft had struck home, wounding at least one individual, put himself back in his own seat, well pleased, and St. George summarily retreated to the rear of the car, full of reflections the farthest removed from agreeable ones.
Here he was in a quarrel, and just a moment before he had been giving advice how to spare the feelings of others, and he couldn't control his own, but must anger Phipps with whom he had never had the least falling out. Faugh! He was so disgusted with himself, he would have thanked any one who would take him one side, and give him that castigation he felt he so richly deserved. And there were the eyes of all the passengers in the car directed to him, as if he were a person whose movements were singular, to say the least, and would bear watching. Half of them had heard the old gentleman's sharp, ringing rebuke even if they had not been listeners to the quarrel itself, and the other half were now, he felt, staring at him and whispering over him as he stood pretending to look out of the door, while their eyes seemed burning holes into his jacket.