n all her life before, anyone had
ever fought for her, and that now of all champions in the world fate
should have chosen Jeremy, who was, she had supposed, her enemy--never
her defender!

And that horrid child of the Dean--she had always disliked him, with
his long yellow neck and watery eyes! How dared he say such things about
her! He had always been rude to her. She remembered once--

Jeremy arrived, washed, brushed, and obstinate. He would, of course, be
scolded to within an inch of his life, and he did not care. He had seen
the Dean's Ernest howling and kicking on the ground; he had soiled his
straw hat for him, dirtied his stiff white collar for him, and made
his nose bleed. He glared at his aunt (one eye was rapidly disappearing
beneath a blue bruise), and he was proud, triumphant, and very tired.

Farewells were made--again many apologies--"Nothing, I assure you,
nothing. Boys will be boys, I know," from Miss Maddison.

Then they were seated in the jingle, Jeremy next to Aunt Amy, awaiting
his scolding. It did not come. Aunt Amy tried; she knew what she should
say. She should be very angry, disgusted, ashamed. She could not be any
of these things. That horrid boy had insulted her. She was touched and
proud as she had never been touched and proud in her life before.

Jeremy waited, and then as nothing came his weariness grew upon him. As
the old fat pony jogged along, as the evening colours of street and sky
danced before him, sleep came nearer and nearer.

He nodded, recovered, nodded and nodded again. His body pressed closer
to Aunt Amy's, leaned against her. His head rested upon her shoulder.

After a moment's pause she put her arm round him--so, holding him, she
stared, defiantly and crossly, upon the world.

CHAPTER VII. RELIGION

I

Always in after years Jeremy remembered that party of Miss Maddison's,
not because it had been there that he had won his first fight, but for
the deeper reason that from that day his life received a new colour,
woven into the texture of it; even now when he thinks of those hours
that followed Miss Maddison's party he catches his breath and glances
around him to see whether everything is safe. The children, on arriving
home that evening, found that their father and mother had already
returned from Drymouth. Jeremy, sleepy though he was, rushed to his
mother, held her hand, explained his black eye, and then suddenly, in a
way that he had, fell asleep, there as