Bob-cat!" chanted Curly, in gratuitous insult of which
only bantam shamelessness is capable. "Stop, will I? Who'll make me?
You? You want to fight?"

He danced about Bob's quiet little figure, snapping his fingers in the
new boy's eyes. Then, suddenly, he swung his wiry body and swept a
stinging blow in Bob's face.

A yell of delight from the despot's own drowned a weaker chorus of
protest. Curly backed and squared, ready for some show of retaliation or
resistance, a scornful little grin on his face.

"Come on, now. Fight! Stop me!" he cried.

But Bob did not move. Curly's blow had landed fair on the tender little
red lip, and it had cut against the teeth behind; a tiny scarlet stream
flowed down Bob's smooth little chin. In his eyes the dizziness of the
first jar gradually gave way to slow amazement. Then the tears welled
up, hot tears which overflowed the lids and ran scalding down the
cheeks, but they did not conceal or quench a glitter which grew to a
bright flame behind them.

Bob's school-bag and lunch-box dropped from his hands. The pudgy fists
which had never before been clinched with belligerent purpose, but which
were, nevertheless, a boy's fists, doubled themselves into hard little
knots; but still he stood quiet.

[Illustration: "HE SET HIS FACE ONCE MORE TOWARD SCHOOL AND WALKED VERY
FAST"]

So far as his whirling little mind could think, he thought thus: So this
was fighting; this was what he had promised mother not to do; what he
had promised--had promised--promised. He was not so big, this boy who
had struck him, not so big. Bob was not afraid. But that a promise is
a thing to be kept inviolate he had learned, oh, years ago, from Papa
Jack, along with all the other _of-course-ities_ of life, like telling
the truth, keeping your troubles to yourself, and not being a cry-baby
or a telltale. And a promise to mother--well, nothing could be more
sacred. Yet here was a new condition which he had never met before, a
new situation which suddenly made him see in an altogether different
aspect a question supposedly settled--this question of to fight or not
to fight. It made his sweeping promise to mother suddenly seem to have
been very ill-advised indeed. He wondered if his mother could have known
that he would meet this kind of thing at school. In that first instant
after Curly's blow was struck, instinct told him that fists were made to
be used, and reason added that self-defense is right; and now somet