terested in the operation, his curly head bent, his childish
little hands on his hips.

He was talking and laughing gaily; but at the sound of footsteps in
the passage he glanced up, and, seeing me, stared in haughty
surprise, which tipped the scales towards anger.

"Here is a monsieur who is belated on the Pass, and begs" (this was
hardly the way in which I would have put it) "that he may be allowed
to share your room," explained our landlady.

"_Share my room!_" repeated the Brat, so dumfounded at the simple
statement that he spoke in English. Now I knew that he was a
countryman, not of mine, but of Molly's, and I wished that she were
here to deal with him. "I have never heard anything so--so
ridiculous."

"Really," said I, assuming an air I had found successful with freshers
in good old days of under-grad-dom (Molly called it my "belted hearl"
manner), "really, I fail to see anything ridiculous in the proposal.
This is an inn, which professes to accommodate travellers. I have a
right to insist upon a bed."

To my intense irritation Innocentina giggled. The Brat did not laugh,
but he grew rosy, like a girl. Even his little ears turned pink, under
his absurd mop of chestnut curls. "You have no right to insist upon
mine," retorted he, in the honey-sweet contralto which tried in vain
to make of a pert imp, an angel.

"You cannot sleep in two," said I.

"That is my affair, since I have agreed to pay for them."

"I contend that you cannot pay for both, since one is legally mine, by
the laws protecting travellers," I argued truculently, hoping to
frighten the rude child, though I should have been sore put to it to
prove my point.

"I have always heard that possession is nine points of the law," said
he, impudent and apparently unintimidated. "This is my room, every
hole and corner of it, and if you try to intrude, I shall simply sit
up and yell all night, and throw things, so that you will not get an
instant's sleep. I swear it."

Then I lost my temper. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," I
exclaimed. "I wonder where you were brought up?"

"Where big boys never bully little ones."

"Of all the selfish, impertinent brats!" I could not help muttering.

"If I'm a brat, you're a brute, sir. You have only to glance at the
dictionary to see which is worse."

He looked so impish, defying me, like a miniature Ajax, that with all
the will in the world to box his ears, I burst out laughing.

Checking my mirth a