pressure of strong fingers under his ear constrained him to remain as he was; therefore, abandoning resistance, and, oddly enough, accepting without comment the indication that his captor desired to remain for the moment incognito, he resorted calmly to explanations.
"She tore up a picture of mine," he said, receiving the punishment without apparent emotion. "She seemed to think because she'd drawn it herself she had a right to."
There was a slight whimsical droop at the corner of his mouth as he spoke, which might have been thought characteristic of him. He was an odd-looking boy, not ill-made, though very thin and not tall. His pallor was clear and even, as though constitutional; the features were delicate, almost childlike, but they were very slightly distorted, through nervous habit, to an expression at once wistful and humorous; one eyebrow was a shade higher than the other, one side of the mouth slightly drawn down; the eyelids twitched a little, habitually; the fine, blue eyes themselves were almost comically reproachful—the look of a puppy who thinks you would not have beaten him if you had known what was in his heart. All of this was in the quality of his voice, too, as he said to his invisible captor, with an air of detachment from any personal feeling:
"What peculiar shoes you wear! I don't think I ever felt any so pointed before."
The rescuing knight took no thought of offering to help the persecuted damsel to arise; instead, he tightened his grip upon the prisoner's neck until, perforce, water—not tears—started from the latter's eyes.
"You miserable little muff," said the conqueror, "what the devil do you mean, making this scene on our front lawn?"
"Why, it's Eugene!" exclaimed the helpless one. "They didn't expect you till to-night. When did you get in?"
"Just in time to give you a lesson, my buck," replied Bantry, grimly. "In GOOD time for that, my playful step-brother."
He began to twist the other's wrist—a treatment of bone and ligament in the application of which school-boys and even freshmen are often adept. Eugene made the torture acute, and was apparently enjoying the work, when suddenly—without any manner of warning—he received an astounding blow upon the left ear, which half stunned him for the moment, and sent his hat flying and himself reeling, so great was the surprise and shock of it. It was not a slap, not an open-handed push, nothing like it, but a fierce, well-delivered blow from a clinched fist with the shoulder behind it, and it was the girl who had given it.
"Don't you dare to touch Joe!" she cried, passionately. "Don't you lay a finger on him."
Furious and red, he staggered round to look at her.
"You wretched little wild-cat, what do you mean by that?" he broke out.
"Don't you touch Joe!" she panted. "Don't you—" Her breath caught and there was a break in her voice as she faced him. She could not finish the repetition of that cry, "Don't you touch Joe!"
But there was no break in the spirit, that passion of protection which had dealt the blow. Both boys looked at her, something aghast.
She stood before them, trembling with rage and shivering with cold in the sudden wind which had come up. Her hair had fallen and blew across her streaming face in brown witch-wisps; one of the ill-darned stockings had come down and hung about her shoe in folds full of snow; the arm which had lost its sleeve was bare and wet; thin as the arm of a growing boy, it shook convulsively, and was red from shoulder to clinched fist. She was covered with snow. Mists of white drift blew across her, mercifully half veiling her.
Eugene recovered himself. He swung round upon his heel, restored his hat to his head with precision, picked up his stick and touched his banjo-case with it.
"Carry that into the house," he said, indifferently, to his step-brother.
"Don't you do it!" said the girl, hotly, between her chattering teeth.
Eugene turned towards her, wearing the sharp edge of a smile. Not removing his eyes from her face, he produced with deliberation a flat silver box from a pocket, took therefrom a cigarette, replaced the box, extracted a smaller silver box from another pocket, shook out of it a fusee, slowly lit the cigarette—this in a splendid silence, which he finally broke to say, languidly, but with particular distinctness:
"Ariel Tabor, go home!"
The girl's teeth stopped chattering, her lips remaining parted; she shook the hair out of her eyes and stared at him as if she did not understand, but Joe Louden, who had picked up the banjo-case obediently, burst into cheerful laughter.
"That's it, 'Gene," he cried, gayly. "That's the way to talk to her!"
"Stow it, you young cub," replied Eugene, not turning to him. "Do you think I'm trying to be amusing?"
"I don't know what you mean by 'stow it,'" Joe began, "but if—"
"I mean," interrupted the other, not relaxing his faintly smiling stare at the girl—"I mean that Ariel Tabor is to go home. Really, we can't have this kind of thing occurring upon our front lawn!"
The flush upon her wet cheeks deepened and became dark; even her arm grew redder as she gazed back at him. In his eyes was patent his complete realization of the figure she cut, of this bare arm, of the strewn hair, of the fallen stocking, of the ragged shoulder of her blouse, of her patched short skirt, of the whole dishevelled little figure. He was the master of the house, and he was sending her home as ill-behaved children are sent home by neighbors.
The immobile, amused superiority of this proprietor of silver boxes, this wearer of strange and brilliant garments, became slightly intensified as he pointed to the fallen sleeve, a rag of red and snow, lying near her feet.
"You might take that with you?" he said, interrogatively.
Her gaze had not wavered in meeting his, but at this her eyelashes began to wink uncontrollably, her chin to tremble. She bent over the sleeve and picked it up, before Joe Louden, who had started towards her, could do it for her. Then turning, her head still bent so that her face was hidden from both of them, she ran out of the gate.
"DO go!" Joe called after her, vehemently. "Go! Just to show what a fool you are to think 'Gene's in earnest."
He would have followed, but his step-brother caught him by the arm. "Don't stop her," said Eugene. "Can't you tell when I AM in earnest, you bally muff!"
"I know you are," returned the other, in a low voice. "I didn't want her to think so for your sake."
"Thousands of thanks," said Eugene, airily. "You are a wise young judge. She couldn't stay—in THAT state, could she? I sent her for her own good."
"She could have gone in the house and your mother might have loaned her a jacket," returned Joe, swallowing. "You had no business to make her go out in the street like that."
Eugene laughed. "There isn't a soul in sight—and there, she's all right now. She's home."
Ariel had run along the fence until she came to the next gate, which opened upon a walk leading to a shabby, meandering old house of one story, with a very long, low porch, once painted white, running the full length of the front. Ariel sprang upon the porch and disappeared within the house.
Joe stood looking after her, his eyelashes winking as had hers. "You oughtn't to have treated her that way," he said, huskily.
Eugene
