d punch my head. I promise you that I won't hit back."

Singh advanced to him immediately with doubled fists, and Glyn stood up
laughing in his face and put his hands behind him.

"No," cried Singh. "Come down the cricket-field behind the trees, and
we will take two of the fellows with us and have it out, for I am sick
of it, and I'll put up with no more."

"All right," said Glyn coolly. "But lock that belt up first at the
bottom of your box or where it's safest."

"Not I," cried Singh loftily. "I can't stop to think of a few
rubbishing gems when my honour's at stake like this."

"Well," said Glyn, "if you won't, I must;" and, crossing to the trunk,
he opened it, saw that the belt-case was right down in one corner below
some clothes, banged down the lid, locked it up, and offered Singh the
keys.

"Bah!" ejaculated the boy, and he turned away.

"Let's see," said Glyn, in the most imperturbable, good-humoured way;
"we'll have Burney and one of the other big chaps. I'll have Burney.
What do you say to Slegge?"

Singh made no reply, but stood scowling out of the window.

"But I say, the first thing will be that they will ask what the row's
about. What were we quarrelling for, Singhy?"

There was no reply.

"Oh, I remember," continued Glyn. "Because I bullied you about showing
off with that belt. Well, we can't say anything about that. What shall
we say? Look here, how would it be to go down the field together and
fall out all at once, and you hit me, and I'll hit you back, and then we
will rush at one another, calling names, and the fellows will come up to
see what's the matter, and then we will fight."

"Ur-r-r-r-r-ur!" growled Singh, rushing at him with clenched fists; but
as he saw the good-humoured twinkle in his companion's eyes, the boy
stopped short, and his clenched fists dropped to his sides. "You are
laughing at me," he said; "laughing in your nasty, cold-blooded English
way."

"Well, isn't it enough to make a fellow laugh? Here are you trying to
get up a quarrel about nothing, and threatening to break with me, when
you know you don't mean it all the time."

"I do mean it!" raged out the boy. "For you have insulted me cruelly."

"Ah, that's what you say now, Singhy; but before you go to bed to-night
you will be as vexed with yourself as can be, and wish you had not said
what you have. You will feel then that I have only spoken to you just
as the dad would if he had been here. And t