more of a gentleman than you'll ever be, Phil--throwing coal at a
chap's head like that."

Phyllis did up her bootlace and went on in silence, but her
shoulders shook, and presently a fat tear fell off her nose and
splashed on the metal of the railway line. Bobbie saw it.

"Why, what's the matter, darling?" she said, stopping short and
putting her arm round the heaving shoulders.

"He called me un-un-ungentlemanly," sobbed Phyllis. "I didn't never
call him unladylike, not even when he tied my Clorinda to the
firewood bundle and burned her at the stake for a martyr."

Peter had indeed perpetrated this outrage a year or two before.

"Well, you began, you know," said Bobbie, honestly, "about coals and
all that. Don't you think you'd better both unsay everything since
the wave, and let honour be satisfied?"

"I will if Peter will," said Phyllis, sniffling.

"All right," said Peter; "honour is satisfied. Here, use my hankie,
Phil, for goodness' sake, if you've lost yours as usual. I wonder
what you do with them."

"You had my last one," said Phyllis, indignantly, "to tie up the
rabbit-hutch door with. But you're very ungrateful. It's quite
right what it says in the poetry book about sharper than a serpent
it is to have a toothless child--but it means ungrateful when it