pain, though his arm felt as
though it had been wrenched out of its socket, and the blood trickled
in a steady stream from his bumped forehead. It was the indignity, the
outrage, the physical humiliation that had to be paid back. It made
him tremble with fury and a kind of helpless terror to realize that,
because he was little, any common woman could shake and beat him and
treat him as though he belonged to her. He would tell his father.
Even his father, who had so far forgotten himself as to marry such a
creature, would see that there were things one couldn't endure. Or he
would call up the Banditti and plot a devastating retaliation.

In the meantime he was glad he had bitten her.

He walked on unsteadily. The earth still undulated and threatened
every now and then to rise up like a wave in front of him and cast him
down. He was growing cold and stiff, too, in the reaction. He had
stopped crying, but his teeth chattered and his sobs had degenerated
into monotonous, soul-shattering hiccoughs. Passers-by looked at him
disapprovingly. Evidently that nasty little boy from No. 10 had been
fighting again.

He had counted on the Banditti, but the Banditti were not on their
usual hunting-ground. An ominous silence answered the accustomed
war-cry, uttered in an unsteady falsetto, and the ruins had a more than
usually dejected look, as though they had suddenly lost all hope of
themselves. He called again, and this time, like an earth-sprite,
Frances Wilmot rose up from a sheltered corner and waved to him. She
had a book in her hand, and she rubbed her eyes and rumpled up her
short hair as though rousing herself from a dream.

"I did hear you," she said, "but I was working something out. I'll
tell you all about it in a minute. But what's happened? Why is your
face all bleeding?"

She seemed so concerned about him that he was glad of his wounds. And
yet she had the queer effect of making him want to cry again. That
wouldn't do. She wouldn't respect him if he cried. He thrust his
hands deep into his pockets and knitted his fair brows into a fearful
Stonehouse scowl.

"Oh, it's nothing. I've had a row--at home. That's all. My father's
new wife h-hit me--and I b-bit her. Jolly hard. And then I fell
downstairs."

"Why did she hit you?"

"Oh, I don't know. She's just a beast----"

"Of course you know. Don't be silly."

"Well, she said I'd been smoking, and I said I hadn't----"

"Had you? You