Page:The Fight at Dame Europa's School.djvu/34

 "Louis and William are very late to-day," observed the Dame when dinner was half over. "Does any one know where they are?" And then bit by bit she learned from some of the boys sitting near her the whole story.

"And pray, John, why did you not separate them?" demanded the Dame.

"Please, ma'am," answered Johnnie, "I was a neutral."

"A what, sir?" said she.

"A neutral, ma'am."

"Just precisely what you had no business to be," she returned. "You were placed in authority in order that you might act, not that you might stand aloof from acting. Any baby can do that. I might as well have made little Georgie here a monitor, if I had meant him to have nothing to do. Neutral, indeed! Neutral is just a fine name for Coward. Besides, there is no such thing. You must take one side or the other, do what you will. Now, which side did you take, I wonder?"

A titter ran round the room, and the little Boys began to whisper to one another something which appeared to be in their small estimation an excellent joke. It was good fun to them to see a monitor badgered, even if they should get paid out for it afterwards.

"What are you saying?" said the Dame. "Both sides, eh? Well, and how did you manage that, Master John?"

There was some more tittering and whispering and shuffling about on the forms, and then a chorus of voices said, "Please 'em, he sucked up to both of them."

"Just what 'neutrals' always do," said Mrs. Europa; "sucked up to both, I suppose, and pleased neither. Ah, no doubt," she continued, gradually gathering information, "offended Louis by always preaching at him that he was in the wrong, and offended William by supplying Louis with stones. Now, I tell you what it is, John. I have long watched your career with pain, and have