Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/128

 back of house with a boy slightly larger than himself, and came out about even—so even, indeed, that although each boy claimed a victory and asked only to be let at the other again to prove it, each had already determined in his heart that his next fight would be with somebody else.

This fight did Edward a lot of good. He had been considered something of a sissy. That phase was over. Asked by a stern mother to explain a purplish, greenish circle about his left eye, he had told a long rigmarole about a religious dispute with another boy who had made fun of the miracles in the Bible. Mrs. Eaton could not approve of fighting, but the cause in which her little boy had fought softened her judgment. He was forgiven, but he was not to fight any more. He could show his contempt for scoffers in more telling ways.

But the true inwardness of the battle was altogether different. Between the boys' playground and the girls' at Mr. Harrington's school there was a high fence of pine boards. Here and there a knot had fallen or been punched from its socket, and through these peep-holes the boys and girls sometimes communicated, if only for the reason that during school hours such communication, even between brothers and sisters, was strictly forbid-