But Bob did not move. Curly's blow had landed fair on the tender little red lip, and it had cut against the teeth behind; a tiny scarlet stream flowed down Bob's smooth little chin. In his eyes the dizziness of the first jar gradually gave way to slow amazement. Then the tears welled up, hot tears which overflowed the lids and ran scalding down the cheeks, but they did not conceal or quench a glitter which grew to a bright flame behind them. Bob's school-bag and lunch-box dropped from his hands. The pudgy fists which had never before been clinched with belligerent purpose, but which were, nevertheless, a boy's fists, doubled themselves into hard little knots; but still he stood quiet. [Illustration: "HE SET HIS FACE ONCE MORE TOWARD SCHOOL AND WALKED VERY FAST"] So far as his whirling little mind could think, he thought thus: So this was fighting; this was what he had promised mother not to do; what he had promised--had promised--promised. He was not so big, this boy who had struck him, not so big. Bob was not afraid. But that a promise is a thing to be kept inviolate he had learned, oh, years ago, from Papa Jack, along with all the other _of-course-ities_ of life, like telling the truth, keeping your troubles to yourself, and not being a cry-baby or a telltale. And a promise to mother--well, nothing could be more sacred. Yet here was a new condition which he had never met before, a new situation which suddenly made him see in an altogether different aspect a question supposedly settled--this question of to fight or not to fight. It made his sweeping promise to mother suddenly seem to have been very ill-advised indeed. He wondered if his mother could have known that he would meet this kind of thing at school. In that first instant after Curly's blow was struck, instinct told him that fists were made to be used, and reason added that self-defense is right; and now something else was stirring in his heart--something which might not, perhaps, be wholly unexpected, under such circumstances, to stir in the heart of a boy whose grandfather had carried a musket at Gettysburg and whose father had worn khaki at San Juan. He wondered if his mother could have known. [Illustration: "A RING OF BOYS--EXCITED, EAGER, YELLING"] But Bob's fists only clinched; they did not strike. All the sturdy little muscles in his small body stiffened, and he stood with head up and eyes blazing, but he did not strike. And then the school-bell suddenly began to ring, and the group about him broke away; and Curly Davis started off, shouting back something about fixing _him_ after school, and--he was alone. Bob stood still. He realized that the last bell for school had rung. He knew that he should have gone in with the others. That was what he had been sent to school for, certainly. But he stood still.