Julian and Charlie had terrible quarrels. Julian was always quite quiet: only his eyes and tongue snapped and bit. He was dreadfully sarcastic. The quiet things he said lashed and tortured Charlie to screaming frenzies; and he would give a little dry bit of laugh now and then as he observed the boiling up of his brother. Once they fought with croquet mallets on the lawn, and even Mariella was alarmed. And once Charlie picked up an open penknife and flung it. Julian held his hand up. The knife was stuck in the palm. He looked at it heavily, and a haggard sick horror crept over his face and he fainted with a bang on the floor. Everybody thought he was dead. But the grandmother said ‘Nonsense’ when Martin went to her and announced the fatality; and she was right. After she had revived and bandaged him, poor trembling Charlie was sent in to apologise. Later all the others went in, full of awe and reverence, and everybody was rather embarrassed. Charlie was a trifle hysterical and turned somersaults and threw himself about, making noises in his throat. Everybody giggled a lot with the relief, and Julian was very gentle and modest on the sofa. After that Julian and Charlie were better friends and sometimes called each other ‘Old chap.’ Once at a children’s gymkhana that somebody had, Charlie fell down; and when he saw a trickle of blood on his knee he went white and began to whimper. He never could bear blood. Some of the gymkhana children looked mocking and whispered, and Julian came along and told them to shut up, very fiercely. Then he patted Charlie on the back and said: ‘Buck up, old chap,’ and put an arm round him and took him up to the house to be bandaged. Judith watched them going away, pressed close to each other, the backs of their heads and their thin childish shoulders looking lonely and pathetic. She thought suddenly: ‘They’ve no Mother and Father;’ and her throat ached. Charlie sometimes told you things. Once, after one of the quarrels, chucking pebbles into the river, he said: ‘It’s pretty rotten Julian and me always quarreling.’ ‘But it’s his fault, Charlie.’ ‘Oh, I dare say it’s just as much mine.’ Magnanimous Charlie. ‘Oh no, he’s so beastly to you. I think he’s a horrid boy.’ ‘Rot! What do you know about it?’ he said indignantly. ‘He’s ripping and he’s jolly clever too. Much cleverer than me. He thinks I’m an awful ass.’ ‘Oh, you’re not.’ ‘Well he thinks so,’ he said gloomily. ‘I expect I am.’ It was terrible to see him so depressed. ‘_I_ don’t think so, Charlie.’ Then fearfully plunging: ‘I wish you were _my_ brother.’ He hurled a pebble, watched it strike the water, got up to go and said charmingly: ‘Well, I wish you were my sister.’