to the dead past. Just at present he felt that he disliked Bill rather more than anyone else in the world, with the possible exception of Major Percy Stokes.
"So you're Harold, are you, Tommy?" he said, in a metallic voice. "Then just you listen here a minute."
"Jerry," cried Bill, advancing, "you keep your mouth shut, or I'll dot you one."
Mr. Fisher retreated and, grasping a chair, swung it above his head.
"You better!" he said, curtly.
"Mr. Fisher, do be a gentleman," entreated Mrs. Bramble.
"My dear sir." There was a crooning winningness in Percy's voice. "My dear sir, do nothing hasty. Think before you speak. Don't go and be so silly as to act like a muttonhead. I'd be ashamed to be so spiteful. Respect a father's feelings."
"Tommy," said Mr. Fisher, ignoring them all, "you think your pa's a commercial. He ain't. He's a fighting-man, doing his eight-stone-four ringside, and known to all the heads as 'Young Porky.'"
Bill sank into a chair. He could see Harold's round eyes staring at him.
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"I'd never have thought it of you, Jerry," he said, miserably. "If anyone had come to me and told me that you could have acted so raw I'd have dotted him one."
"And if anyone had come to me and told me that I should live to see the day when you broke training a week before a fight at the National I'd given him one for himself."
"Harold, my lad," said Percy, "you mustn't think none the worse of your pa for having been a man of wrath. He hadn't seen the bright light then. It's all over now. He's give it up for ever, and there's no call for you to feel ashamed."
Bill seized on the point.
"That's right, Harold," he said, reviving. "I've give it up; I was to have fought an American named Murphy at the National next Monday, but I ain't going to now, not if they come to me on their bended knees. Not if the King of England come to me on his bended knees."
Harold drew a deep breath.
"Oh?" he cried, shrilly. "Oh, aren't you? Then what about my two bob? What about my two bob I've betted Dicky Saunders that Jimmy Murphy won't last ten rounds?"
He looked round the room wrathfully.
"It's thick," he said in the crisp, gentlemanly voice of which his parents were so proud. "It's jolly thick. That's what it is. A chap takes the trouble to study form and saves up his pocket-money to have a bit on a good thing, and then he goes and gets
