THE STEADFAST HEART
can’t call me that name…. Don’t pick on me, I got to stand up for myself.”
Crane either failed to estimate Angus truly, or depended upon outside interference in his behalf, for he grimaced horribly and laughed provocatively. “Who’s afraid of you?” he said, using the ancient formula of boyhood. “I guess I can call you whatever I want to, you bet. I can call it to you now, and what’ll you do about it?… Murderer! Ya-aa-aa!”
Angus acted deliberately, with no glint of passion in his eyes. He stepped one pace nearer his tormentor and slapped his cheek with a sharp, clean, disconcerting snap. “I got to stand up for myself,” he said in monotonous repetition.
Crane emitted a bellow of rage and struck wildly at Angus…. The fight was on, without the usual formality of a chip on the shoulder which is a part of the international law of Rainbow’s boydom. Pride compelled Crane; resolution, firmly fixed, made it impossible for Angus to retreat; indeed the idea of retreat did not come to him. He was standing up for himself in the primitive way in which alone he could vision standing up for himself. One swift glance he cast at Lydia Canfield, and she bobbed her head excitedly and threw a little smile to him.
It was nothing but a boys’ fight, a battle of ten-year-olds, of wild blows which found no
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