is shoulders with fine contempt. "You great,
cowardly bully," said he, and stopping suddenly, turned right about and
faced the enemy. At once Long-Shanks stopped too, and the two brothers
broke out into derisive laughter.

They were now standing directly under the window at which the old
colonel was sitting. He leaned out.

"Bravo, youngster!" said he, "you are a plucky one--here--drink this on
the strength of it." He had taken up the tumbler and was holding it
out of the window toward Little-Boy. The boy looked up, surprised, then
whispered something to his older brother, gave him his portfolio to
hold, and gripped the big glass in his two little hands.

When he had drunk all he wanted, with one hand he held the glass by
its stem, with the other took back the portfolio from his brother, and
without asking by your leave, handed the glass over to him.

Chubby-Cheeks then took a long swallow.

"The blessed boy," muttered the colonel to himself. "I give him my
glass, and without further ado he makes his _cher frere_ drink out of
it, too."

But by the face of Little-Boy, who now reached the glass up to the
window again, one could see that he had only been doing something which
seemed to him quite a matter of course.

"Do you like the bouquet?" asked the old colonel.

"Yes, thanks, very well," said the boy, who snatched at his cap
politely, and went on his way with his brother.

The colonel looked after them until they had turned a corner of the
street and disappeared from his sight.

"With boys like that"--then said the colonel, returning to his
soliloquizing--"it is often an odd thing about boys like that."

"That they should fight so in the public streets!" said the fat waiter
with disapproval, still standing at his post. "One wonders how the
teacher can allow it; and they seem to belong to good family, too."

"It isn't that that does the harm," grunted the old colonel. "Young
people must have their liberty, teachers can't always be keeping an eye
on them. Boys all fight--must fight."

He rose heavily from his place so that the chair creaked beneath him,
scraped the cigar butt out of its holder into the ash-tray, and walked
stiffly over to the wall where his hat hung on a nail. At the same time
he continued his reverie.

"In young blood like that nature will show itself--everything, just as
it _really_ is--afterward, when older, things look all much alike--then
one is able to study more carefully--young b