Strong and Steady

But one day matters came to a climax.

One afternoon there were a few young fellows standing on the piazza in front of Mr. Drummond's store. Joshua was one of them, and there being no customers to wait upon, Walter also had joined the company. They were discussing plans for a picnic to be held in the woods on the next Saturday afternoon. It was to be quite a general affair.

"You will come, Walter, won't you?" asked one of the number.

"No," said Joshua; "he can't come."

"I didn't authorize you to speak for me," said Walter, quietly.

"You didn't authorize me to speak for you?" repeated Joshua, in a mocking tone. "Big words for a beggar!"

"What do you mean by calling me a beggar?" demanded Walter, quietly, but with rising color.

"I don't choose to give you any explanation," said Joshua, scornfully. "You're only my father's hired boy, working for your board."

"That may be true, but I am not a beggar, and I advise you not to call me one again."

Walter's tone was still quiet, and Joshua wholly misunderstood him; otherwise, being a coward at heart, he would have desisted.

"I'll say it as often as I please," he repeated. "You're a beggar, and if we hadn't taken pity on you, you'd have had to go to the poor-house."

Walter was not quarrelsome; but this last insult, in presence of half-a-dozen boys between his own age and Joshua's, roused him.

"Joshua Drummond," he said, "you've insulted me long enough, and I've stood it, for I didn't want to quarrel; but I will stand it no longer."

He walked up to Joshua, and struck him in the face, not a hard blow, but still a blow.

Joshua turned white with passion, and advanced upon our hero furiously, with the intention of giving him, as he expressed it, the worst whipping he ever had.

Walter parried his blow, and put in another, this time sharp and stinging. Joshua was an inch or two taller, but Walter was more than a match for him. Joshua threw out his arms, delivering his blows at random, and most of them failed of effect. Indeed, he was so blinded with rage, that Walter, who kept cool, had from this cause alone a great advantage over him. Joshua at length seized him, and he was compelled to throw him down. As Joshua lay prostrate, with Walter's knee upon his breast, Mr. Drummond, who had gone over to his own house, appeared upon the scene.

"What's all this?" he demanded in mingled surprise and anger. "Conrad, what means this outrageous conduct?"

Walter rose, and, turning to his employer, said, manfully, "Joshua insulted me, sir, and I have punished him. That's all!"

CHAPTER XII.

AFTER THE BATTLE

Without waiting to hear Mr. Drummond's reply to his explanation, Walter re-entered the store. He had no disposition to discuss the subject in presence of the boys who were standing on the piazza.

Mr. Drummond followed him into the store, and Joshua accompanied him. He was terribly angry with Walter, and determined to get revenged upon him through his father.

"Are you going to let that beggar pitch into me like that?" he demanded. "He wouldn't have got me down, only he took me at disadvantage."

"Conrad," said Mr. Drummond, "I demand an explanation of your conduct. I come from my house, and find you fighting like a street rowdy, instead of attending to your duties in the store."

"I have already given you an explanation, Mr. Drummond," said Walter, firmly. "Joshua chose to insult me before all the boys, and I don't allow myself to be insulted if I can help it. As to being out of the store, there was no customer to wait upon, and I went to the door for a breath of fresh air. I have never been accustomed to such confinement before."

"You say Joshua insulted you. How did he insult you?"

"I was asked if I would go to the picnic on Saturday afternoon. He didn't wait for me to answer, but said at once that I couldn't come."

"Was that all?"

"On my objecting to his answering for me, he charged me with being a beggar, and said that but for you I would have been obliged to go to the poor-house. If this had been the first time he had annoyed me, I might have passed it over, but it is far from being the first; so I knocked him down."

Mr. Drummond was by no means a partisan of Walter, but in the month that our hero had been in his employ he had found him a very efficient clerk. Whatever Walter undertook to do he did well, and he had mastered the details of the retail dry-goods trade in a remarkably short time, so that his services were already nearly as valuable as those of young Nichols, who received eight dollars a week. Therefore Mr. Drummond was disposed to smooth over matters, for the sake of retaining the services which he obtained so cheap. He resolved, therefore, to temporize.

"You are both of you wrong," he said. "Joshua, you should not have called Conrad a beggar, for he earns his living. You, Conrad, should not have been so violent. You should have told me, and I would have spoken to Joshua."

"Excuse me, Mr. Drummond, but I don't like tale-bearing. I did the only thing I could."

"Ahem!" said Mr. Drummond, "you were too violent. I would suggest that you should each beg the other's pardon, shake hands, and have done with it."

"Catch me begging pardon of my father's hired boy!" exclaimed Joshua scornfully. "I haven't got quite so low as that."

"As for me," said Walter, "if I thought I had been in the wrong, I would beg Joshua's pardon without any hesitation. I am not too proud for that, but I think I acted right under the circumstances, and therefore I cannot do it. As for being a hired boy, I admit that such is my position, and I don't see anything to be ashamed of in it."

"You are right there," said Mr. Drummond; for this assertion chimed in with his own views and wishes. "Well, it seems to me you are about even, and you may as well drop the quarrel here."

"I am ready to do so," said Walter, promptly. "If Joshua treats me well, I will treat him well."

"You're mighty accommodating," sneered Joshua. "You seem to think you're on an equality with me."

"I am willing to treat you as an equal," answered Walter, purposely misinterpreting Joshua's remark.

"Oh, you are, are you?" retorted Joshua, with a vicious snap of the eyes. "Do you think you, a hired boy, are equal to me, who am a gentleman?"

"I am glad to hear that you consider yourself a gentleman, and hope you will take care to act like one."

"I'll give you the worst licking you ever had!" exclaimed Joshua, clenching his fists furiously.

"If it isn't any worse than you gave me just now, I can stand it," said Walter.

He was a little angry, also, and this prompted him to speak thus.

Joshua was maddened by this remark, and might have renewed the battle if his father had not imperatively ordered him to leave the store.

"Conrad," said Mr. Drummond, "you have behaved badly. I did not think you were so quarrelsome."

"I don't think I am, sir; but I cannot stand Joshua's treatment."

"Will you promise not to quarrel with him again?"

"That depends on whether he provokes me."

"Of course I can't have you fighting with my son."