tongue, and somehow, surely as you live, I'll make you
repent. Don't dream that my affection for Tony can stand between you and
me," was the warning I sent.

Silently we defied each other in the savage and primitive way which we
female human things have merely modernized, not modified, since the days
of Lilith up to the days of suffragettes. I was asking myself what
punishment I could devise and inflict, if necessary, to fit Milly's
crime, and how I--so small and powerless--could dig myself into a
defensive trench between Eagle and Sidney Vandyke, when I realized that
Eagle's eyes were studying my flushed face. They were sad eyes, yet
there was a faint glint of laughter in them.

"You little fighter!" he said. "You never throw down the cudgels you've
taken up in my defence."

"No, and never will!" I answered, defiance in my voice even for him,
because my blood had been set on fire and the flame would not die down.

"You're very young!" he said, with a faint sigh. "So young that you
haven't learnt not to hurl yourself against stone walls. Learn the
lesson from me, child. Public opinion is a stone wall, the thickest and
highest in the world. The tiny bubble of my reputation was wafted
against it by an evil wind, and burst forever. If I was fool enough once
to hope that I could mend it, I know now that I was mistaken. Broken
bubbles are like Humpty Dumpty: they can't be put together again; and I
don't mean to break my head in the place where the bubble burst, or let
you break yours."

"We shan't break _our_ heads," said I. "We'll break other people's
wicked heads, that deserve to be broken; and they're aching hard already
with sheer rage, because you've made a beautiful new bubble for
yourself, ever so much bigger and brighter than the old one they tried
to burst. Only _tried_, because they may find that it didn't smash when
it seemed to! Then if the old bubble is saved, there'll be two, solid as
crystal and brilliant as rainbows--_boomerang_ bubbles--that will come
blowing back to break the brutes who wanted to burst them!"

Captain March laughed out aloud, and I saw Sidney turn involuntarily
with a slight, nervous start, as if he fancied that the laugh must be
directed against him. "Irish Peggy, you're inimitable!" said Eagle.
"Look out for your metaphors, or you'll be turning my bubble into a
bull!"

"Hang metaphors!" I retorted. "I wish I _could_ turn the bubble into a
bull, not an Irish, but a wild one, and _