, and not be a brute. Then Simpkins Minor kicked him, and several
other nice little boy-friends of his joined the glad throng, and it
became quite a kicking party. So that when Harry and Lucy met at the
corner of Wemyss Road his face was almost unrecognisable, while Lucy
looked as happy as a king, and as proud as a peacock.

'What's up?' asked Lucy briskly.

'Every single boy in the school has kicked me,' said Harry in flat
accents. 'I wish I was dead.'

'So do I,' said Lucy cheerily; 'I think I'm going to be expelled. I
should be quite certain, only my booby-trap came down on Bessie Jayne's
head instead of Miss Whatshername's, and Bessie's no sneak, though she
has got a lump like an ostrich's egg on her forehead, and soaked through
as well. But I think I'm certain to be expelled.'

'I wish I was,' said Harry, weeping with heartfelt emotion. 'I don't
know what's the matter with me; I feel all wrong inside. Do you think
you can turn into things just by reading them? Because I feel as if I
was in "Sandford and Merton," or one of the books the kind clergyman
lent us at the seaside.'

'How awfully beastly!' said Lucy. 'Now, I feel as if I didn't care
tuppence whether I was expelled or not. And, I say, Harry, I feel as if
I was much stronger than you. I know I could twist your arm round and
then hit it like you did me the other day, and you couldn't stop me.'

'Of course I couldn't! _I_ can't stop anybody doing anything they want
to do. Anybody who likes can hit me, and I can't hit back.'

He began to cry again. And suddenly Lucy was really sorry. She had done
this, she had degraded her happy brother to a mere milksop, just because
he had happened to plant her out, and leave her planted. Remorse
suddenly gripped her with tooth and claw.

'Look here,' she said, 'it's all my fault! Because you planted me out,
and I wanted to hurt you. But now I don't. I can't make you boy-brave
again; but I'm sorry, and I'll look after you, Harry, old man! Perhaps
you could disguise yourself in frocks and long hair, and come to the
High School. I'd take care nobody bullied you. It isn't nice being
bullied, is it?'

Harry flung his arms round her, a thing he would never have done in the
public street if he had not been girlish inside at the time.

'No, it's hateful,' he said. 'Lucy, I'm sorry I've been such a pig to
you.'

Lucy put her arms round him, and they kissed each other, though it was
broad daylight and they were walking do