Real Gold

"Then you'd whacked four of them?" cried Perry excitedly.

"I don't know," said Cyril, with his face screwed up. "I suppose I had been knocking them about a bit, and they wouldn't fight any more. They all said I was an English savage, and that I ought to be sent out of the place; and then I began to get a bit cooler, and felt sorry I had knocked them all about so much."

"I don't see why you should," cried Perry.

"But I did. It made such an upset. There was no end of a bother. My mother cried about it when I went home, and said I should never look myself again; and when my father came home and saw me with bits of sticking plaster all over my face and knuckles, he was in a regular passion, for he had been hearing about it in the town, and had words with the other boys' fathers. Then he made me tell him all about it from the beginning, sitting back, looking as fierce and stern as could be, till I had done; and I