Mrs. Bramble rapped on the table.
"Kindly remember there's a lady present, Mr. Fisher."
The little man's face became a battlefield on which rage, misery, and a respect for the decencies of social life struggled for the mastery.
"It's hard," he said at length, in a choked voice. "I just wanted to break his neck for him, but I suppose it's not to be. I know it's him that's at the bottom of it. Directly I found Bill, here, had cut his stick and hopped it, I says to myself, 'It's him!' And here I find them together, so I know it's him. Well, if you say so, Mrs. B., I suppose I mustn't put a head on him. But it's hard. Bill, you come back along of me to the White Hart. I'm surprised at you. Ashamed of you, I am. All the time you and me have known each other I've never known you do such a thing. You such a pleasure to train as a rule. It all comes of getting with bad companions. And your chop cooking on the fire all the while! It'll be spoilt now, and all the expense of ordering another. It's hard. Come along, Bill. Step it."
Mr. Bramble looked at his brother-in-law miserably.
"You tell him," he said.
"You tell him, Jane," said the major.
"I won't," said Mrs. Bramble.
"Tell him what?" asked the puzzled trainer. A sudden thought blanched his face. "You haven't been having a glass of beer, Bill?"
"No, no, Jerry. Not me. It's only that"
"Well?"
"It's only that I'm not going to fight on Monday."
"What!"
"Bill has seen a sudden bright light," said Percy, edging a few inches to the left, so that the table was exactly between the trainer and himself. "At the eleventh hour he has turned from his wicked ways. You ought to be singing with joy, Mr. Fisher, if you really loved Bill. This ought to be the happiest evening you've ever known. You ought to be singing like a little child."
A strange, guttural noise escaped the trainer. It may have been a song, but it did not sound like it.
"It's true, Jerry," said Bill, unhappily. "I been thinking it over, and I'm not going to fight on Monday."
"Glory!" said the major, tactlessly.
Jerry Fisher's face was a study in violent emotions. His eyes seemed to protrude from their sockets like a snail's. He clutched the tablecloth.
"I'm sorry, Jerry," said Bill. "I know it's hard on you. But I've got to think of Harold. This fight with Jimmy Murphy being what you might call a kind of national affair, in a way of speaking, will be reported in the Mail as like as not, with a photograph of me, and Harold reads his Mail regular. We've been keeping it from him all these years that I'm in the profession, and we dursen't let him know now. He would die of shame, Jerry."
Tears appeared in Jerry Fisher's eyes.
"Bill," he cried, "you're off your head. Think of the purse!"
"Ah!" said Mrs. Bramble.
"Think of all the swells that'll be coming to see you. Think of the Lonsdale belt they'll have to let you try for if you beat this Murphy. Think of what the papers'll say. Think of me."
"I know, Jerry, it's chronic. But Harold"
"Think of all the trouble you've took for the last weeks getting yourself into condition."
"I know. But Har"
"You can't not fight on Monday. It 'ud be too hard."
"But Harold, Jerry. He'd die of the disgrace of it. He ain't like you and me, Jerry. He's a little gentleman. I got to think of Harold."
"What about me, pa?" said a youthful voice at the door; and Bill's honest blood froze at the sound. His jaw fell, and he goggled dumbly.
There, his spectacles gleaming in the gaslight, his cheeks glowing with the exertion of the nice walk, his eyebrows slightly elevated with surprise, stood Harold himself.
"Halloa, pa! Halloa, Uncle Percy! Somebody's left the front door open. What were you saying about thinking about me, pa? Ma, will you hear me my piece of poetry again? I think I've forgotten it."
The four adults surveyed the innocent child in silence.
On the faces of three of them consternation was written. In the eyes of the fourth, Mr. Fisher, there glittered that nasty, steely expression of the man who sees his way to getting a bit of his own back. Mr. Fisher's was not an unmixedly chivalrous nature. He considered that he had been badly treated, and what he wanted most at the moment was revenge. He had been fond and proud of Bill Bramble, but those emotions belonged
