Jean laughed. "He didna wear the mask to protect himsel' from fists, lassie. He wore it so naebody would ken him. That's why young Harrison's seconds was masked too. Ye see, the Harrisons' footing in society is no that sure that they dare play tricks with it--as they wad be doing, they think, if it got oot that Harold met a professional boxer in a public theatre. Ey, Sir Thomas has won everything now but a place in society, an' he's bound he'll have that, even if it means havin' the whole family operated on.... But ye'd better serve the dessert, bairnie: the rattle o' the knives an' forks on the plates out in the dining-room sounds empty, as if they was through their meat." As Daisy stepped into the dining-room, young Harold, at a sign from his father, paused in his account of the boxing-match till the girl had collected the used dishes and withdrawn, as he thought, out of earshot. But Daisy, on her mettle, halted just outside the swinging door, and caught every word with her keen young ears: "----And so, Dad, I took it easy in the fourth round. The only reason I went into the bout was, that I wanted to try myself out against this fellow Cluett, who is supposed to be pretty good--and is, too, as witness my lip (first time I've ever been hit since the days when I was a learner!) I didn't want to beat him," young Harrison, as if seeking sympathy with this un-Harrison-like sentiment in the proper quarter, glanced at his mother, "right in front of his own crowd. Besides, he'd have lost his deposit, which means quite a bit to him, and nothing to me." "You done wrong, son," Sir Thomas Harrison thrust out his chin, and whacked his hand on the table; "Y' done wrong. Beat 'em! Whack 'em! Round 'em up! Get their money. Show 'em who's boss. I'd never have b'en where I am to-day, if I'd ever passed up a chance to hand a man a wipe on the jaw, when I had him goin'." CHAPTER XII. SAWN OFF THE OLD BLOCK. The big Harrison villa,--with its broad ostentatious drive, its unsightly smear of cement bridge spoiling the green dip in the lawn, its elaborate superstructure which told of contractors' supplies bought at a dealers' reduction--soon became familiar to Daisy from its concrete cellar to its attic that resounded, mornings, with the virile thudding of young Harold's punching bag. "Don't you ever put anything on a shelf, or hang anything up, or turn anything off?" she demanded, one morning, as, coming down from the top floor with her broom, she passed the door where the heir of the house of Harrison stood in his dressing-gown, combing back his thick black hair before a mirror. "Whence the query, fair one?" said Harold, playfully.