Eric raised himself on his elbows and stared at me.
“Well, of all the chuckle-headed ideas I ever heard! Really, for downright wrong-headedness, give me the average girl. Can’t you see, you silly, that it’s because she’s lame, and the little beggar’s sorry for her? He’s a good-hearted kid if he is Frenchy, and as to licking, just you wait----”
I felt very much snubbed and rather aggrieved, for only that afternoon Eric had grumbled about Léon’s clothes and called him a “mountebank.” Boys seem to keep things separate somehow, in a curious way.
One day Jennie and Léon had been sent to the Home Farm to fetch eggs. It was really the twins’ turn, but they hid so that they shouldn’t have to go, for it was a very hot afternoon. Eric and I went for a stroll through the fields in the same direction to look at a nest of young yellow-hammers in the big paddock. There’s a sort of hill in the big paddock, and we saw Jennie and Léon coming down the cart road from the farm; they went by the road because Jennie hates climbing gates--it hurts her. Léon was carrying the eggs and they came very slowly, because Jennie was tired. Toward them came one, Fred Oram, a village boy, not a nice boy at all. He hates us because the head groom gave him a thrashing when he caught him throwing stones at the thoroughbreds.
Fred Oram began to limp like Jennie, and called out:
“’Ullo, Frenchy! Shall I plait your ’air for ya?”
Eric, who happened to be at home because two-thirds of his school got measles and mother was nervous, began to run, and I ran after him; but we were a good way from the gate, and the hedge is too thick to get through. We ran alongside of it, and heard Léon say in his funny, stilted English:
“Please hold the eggs, my cousin!” Then, evidently to Fred: “How dare you to mock at my cousin and insult me?”
As we reached the gate Eric pulled me back.
“Let the kid alone!” he whispered. “He’s not afraid.”
It reminded me of old King Edward, and “Let the boy win his spurs.”
None of the three saw us. Jennie was standing on the grass at the side, looking very red and excited; Fred Oram was pulling Léon’s hair and dancing round him, making derisive remarks. Léon wrenched his head away, and with a bound stood in the middle of the road, facing his enemy. In spite of his buttony boots--in spite of his blue sash and his long hair--Fred seemed rather afraid of him, for Léon looked, and was, furious.