"Here's my last cup-cake, if you like," said his sister, radiant.

Embarrassed a little by defeat, but nursing no bitterness, he sat down
on the leather divan again and permitted his sister to feed him and tell
him that his disaster was only an accident. He tried to think so, too,
but serious doubts persisted in his mind. There had been a clean-cut
finish to that swing and jab which disturbed his boy's conceit.

"We'll try it again," he began. "I'm all right now, if you like----"

"Oh, Scott, I don't want to!"

"Well, we ought to know which of us really can lick the other----"

"Why, of course, you can lick me every time. Besides, I wouldn't want to
be able to lick you--except when I'm very, very angry. And I ought not
to become angry the way I do. Kathleen tries so hard to make me stop
and reflect before I do things, but I can't seem to learn.... Does your
nose hurt?"

"Not in the least," said her brother, reddening and changing the
subject. "I say, it looks as though it were going to stop raining."

He went to the window; the big Seagrave house with its mansard roof, set
in the centre of an entire city block, bounded by Madison and Fifth
Avenues and by Ninety-fifth and Ninety-sixth Streets, looked out from
its four red brick façades onto strips of lawn and shrubbery, now all
green and golden with new grass and early buds.