Page:Steadfast Heart.djvu/176

 He remembered. Yes, he remembered that, and why he had fought; remembered that it was this girl before him who had made it necessary for him to fight that fight…. Somehow the thing established a bond between them, though she chose elaborately to ignore it. As for Angus, he might be trusted never to make reference to that important step in his life. He nodded again.

“I told him to-day you’d do it again if he didn’t behave himself,” she said sharply.

Angus was conscious of a new, more personal sort of anger than he had ever before experienced. He had seldom been angry. It was his nature to be restrained, to know inhibitions which others without his history could never know. He was deliberate, slow, not subject to sudden emotions…. But now he was angry—singularly enough not because young Crane had abused him—but because the abuse had been uttered to Lydia Canfield…. It was a thing for him to ponder over, and to reflect upon.

“I s’pose he was egged on by his father,” she said with precocious insight.

Angus rested his chin on his palm and thought the matter over; he was always thinking matters over, and Lydia for once possessed the judgment and self-restraint to leave him to himself. Finally he spoke:

“I mustn’t fight again… unless I have to.