adjoining room.

With a stride, Christopher pushed past him and, opening the door,
stopped uncertainly upon the threshold.

At the first glance he saw that the trouble was between Will and
Fred Turner, and that Will, because of his slighter weight, had
got very much the worst of the encounter. The boy stood now,
trembling with anger and bleeding at the mouth, beside an
overturned table, while Fred--a stout, brawny fellow--was busily
pummelling his shoulders.

"You're a sneakin', puny-livered liar, that's what you are!"
finished Turner with a vengeance.

Christopher walked leisurely across the room.

"And you're another," he observed in a quiet voice--the voice of
his courtly father, which always came to him in moments of white
heat. "You are exactly that--a sneaking, puny-livered liar." His
manner was so courteous that it came as a surprise when he struck
out from the shoulder and felled Fred as easily as he might have
knocked over a wooden tenpin. "You really must learn better
manners," he remarked coolly, looking down upon him.

Then he wiped his brow on his blue shirt-sleeve and called for a
glass of beer.