* * * * *

THE COWARD.

Cecilia was knitting by the fire.

"What on earth have you two been doing?" she asked as we came in. "John
looks as if he'd been in a boiler explosion."

"Hardly that," I said. "We've been playing with Chris--haven't we, John?"

John gasped.

"No, we haven't," he said. "On the contrary, _they_ have been playing with
_me_, Cecilia."

"Well, it's all the same thing, isn't it?" said Cecilia. "Anyhow, I heard
_you_ making a most frightful row."

"Of course I was making a row. So would you make a row if people suddenly
mistook you for a Teddy Bear or something and started bunging you about the
room."

"I haven't the least idea what you're talking about," said Cecilia, "but I
think you're being intensely vulgar."

"Vulgar! 'Vulgar,' she says." He laughed bitterly. "You'd be vulgar too if
you'd had that great hulking brute" (he pointed at me) "sitting on the
small of your back, and a hooligan of a boy--"