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 breeches, and shaking it, "this is yours, baby, and you can come and suck it if you like."

"You have bought the house with this," said the other boy imitating the example of his friend, and splitting with laughter, "haven't you, baby?"

I rushed at them in a mad rage, and my anger must have made me seem formidable, for the two imps turned round and took to their heels.

I had remained the victor without fighting, for the two vagrants—double my size—had fled before my fury, and still I was humbled, crushed, annihilated. Almost out of my senses with the stinging shame I felt, I threw myself on the floor and burst into a fit of hysteric sobs. I was found there soon afterwards by my nurse who vainly coaxed me to tell her what had happened; she summoned all the other servants and questioned them, but nobody knew anything, or could make me utter a word about the matter, for when I tried to speak,the image of the elder boy, shaking his unhooded brown prickle at me tauntingly,