To my intense irritation Innocentina giggled. The Brat did not laugh, but he grew rosy, like a girl. Even his little ears turned pink, under his absurd mop of chestnut curls. "You have no right to insist upon mine," retorted he, in the honey-sweet contralto which tried in vain to make of a pert imp, an angel. "You cannot sleep in two," said I. "That is my affair, since I have agreed to pay for them." "I contend that you cannot pay for both, since one is legally mine, by the laws protecting travellers," I argued truculently, hoping to frighten the rude child, though I should have been sore put to it to prove my point. "I have always heard that possession is nine points of the law," said he, impudent and apparently unintimidated. "This is my room, every hole and corner of it, and if you try to intrude, I shall simply sit up and yell all night, and throw things, so that you will not get an instant's sleep. I swear it." Then I lost my temper. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," I exclaimed. "I wonder where you were brought up?" "Where big boys never bully little ones." "Of all the selfish, impertinent brats!" I could not help muttering. "If I'm a brat, you're a brute, sir. You have only to glance at the dictionary to see which is worse." He looked so impish, defying me, like a miniature Ajax, that with all the will in the world to box his ears, I burst out laughing. Checking my mirth as soon as I could, however, I covered its inappropriateness with a steely frown. "I do not need to glance at the dictionary to see that you would be a detestable room-mate," said I, "and on second thoughts I prefer to sleep quietly in the stable rather than press my claim here." With this, I turned on my heel, not giving the enemy time for another volley, and stalked downstairs, followed, I regret to say, by Innocentina's ribald laughter. Almost immediately I was rejoined by the handsome landlady, who, profuse in her regrets, though she had understood no word of what had passed, attempted to console me with the promise of a bed in the _salle-à-manger_. Meanwhile, if I desired to wash, her brother would superintend my ablutions.