"Well," said Rob, half crying, "but there's all the money I make: we'd lose all that, if I don't go. Nell couldn't carry the trout besides all the butter and eggs." "I know it," replied his mother; "but that isn't any reason for your doing what you feel would make you seem like a sneak. We wouldn't have you feel like that for any thing." Poor Rob was very unhappy. He didn't see any way out of his dilemma. He wished he hadn't said he would not go up into Rosita without his yoke. "Anyhow, I'll ask papa," he said. "Yes," replied his mother, "of course you will talk it all over with him; and perhaps you'll feel differently about it after that. Let it all go now, and try to forget it." "I'm not going to think any more about it," said Nelly. "I don't care for those boys: they're too rude for any thing. I sha'n't ever look at one of them; but you wouldn't catch me wearing that yoke again, I tell you!" "That's because you're a girl," said Rob. "If you were a boy, you'd feel just exactly as I do. Oh, goodness! don't I wish you had been a boy, Nell? If you had, we two together could thrash that whole crowd quicker'n wink!" "I shouldn't fight, if I were a boy," said Nelly: "I think it is beneath a boy to fight. It's just like dogs and cats: they fight with their teeth and claws; and boys fight with their fists." "Teeth, too," said Rob, grimly. "Do they?" cried Nelly, in a tone of horror. "Do they really? Oh, Rob! did you ever bite a boy?" "Not many times," said Rob; "but sometimes you have to." "Well, I'm glad I'm not a boy," said Nelly: "that's all I've got to say. The idea of biting!" To Mrs. March's great surprise, she found, when she talked the affair over with her husband, that he was inclined to sympathize with Rob's feeling. "I don't like to have the boy give it up," said Mr. March. "You don't know boys as well as I do, Sarah. They'll taunt him every time he goes through the street. I half wish Nelly hadn't hindered him from giving one of them a good, sound thrashing. He could do it." "Why, Robert!" exclaimed Mrs. March-"you don't mean to tell me that you would be willing to have your son engage in a street fight?" "Well, no," laughed Mr. March: "not exactly that; but there might be circumstances under which I should knock a man down: if he insulted you, for instance; and there might come times in a boy's life when I should think it praiseworthy in him to give another boy a thrashing, and I think this was one of them." "Well, for mercy's sake, don't tell Rob so," said Mrs. March: "he's hot-headed enough now; and, if he had a free permission beforehand from you to knock boys down, I don't know where he'd stop."