Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/113

 Then he said: "I hit you in the stomach so as not to mark your head. I don't want mother to know that we've been quarreling . . . If you want any more I'll give it to you in the same place."

"What did you come home for, anyway?" cried James angrily. "Nobody wanted you."

"Get up," said John, "and don't talk like a woman. You ought to have been a girl. But you aren't and we've got to make a man of you."

James got to his feet with difficulty, and without another word turned and started slowly back toward the house. John followed at the same pace, but when they had thus proceeded for some two hundred yards he quickened his steps, caught up with James and laid his hand on his shoulder.

James shook his shoulder to free it, much as a petulant child might have done.

"Before we go back to the house," said John, "I want your word that you'll marry the girl and come away to sea with me. That would be the easiest. Nobody need know about the marriage—least of all mother—if that's what you are afraid of." James made no answer. "I promised the girl that we would be at her house tomorrow at eleven and that you would marry her."

"If you're so interested in her, why don't you marry her yourself?" exclaimed James. "And