"It wouldn’t make much difference if they did. And you needn’t take up the cudgels like that! You grumbled enough that time Wolff said you couldn’t have a new dress for the Hulsons’ ball!" "He gave it me," she retorted, in the same tone of repressed irritation. "Yes; after you had worried enough. But I doubt very much if you would have got it if I hadn’t been there to back you up. And the insolence of those fellows! He as good as called Arnold and me a pack of cowards because we wouldn’t have anything to do with their idiotic duelling. As though we didn’t know what a farce it all was! Whew! I am glad we are both well out of it, and I wish to goodness we could have given them a lesson they would not have forgotten in a hurry." "A bully is always a coward," the Rev. John said sententiously. "I have always heard those Prussians were terrible bullies." "I should think they are!" Miles agreed. "To hear my dear brother-in-law talk, one would have supposed that I was a raw recruit, or some inferior beast. I held my tongue for Nora’s sake, but I tell you, there were moments——" He clenched his fist significantly, and Nora broke into a short angry laugh. "You were always a model of diplomacy, Miles," she said. Her tone was contemptuous, but her brother chose to take her words literally, and the other two were too absorbed to notice her. "And that," said the squire furiously, "is the people we have kow-towed to—a lot of swaggering braggarts who don’t know what to do with themselves for conceit. This comes of all our rubbishy peace-loving notions! The world only gives us credit for being afraid!"