“Shut your foul mouth,” ordered Polkinghorne angrily.  “Hilaria, let me—­”

“It’s not true,” cried Hilaria.  “Tell them it’s not true, Ishmael.”

Killigrew had the quicker instinct.  “What does it matter if it’s true or not?” he asked.  “We all know Ruan, and we think he’s an awfully nice chap, and nothing else is any affair of ours.  We don’t care what Doughty’s father and mother are, because we don’t like him; we don’t care what Ruan’s are because we do like him.  Personally, I don’t see why Ruan should mind either.  The thing doesn’t alter him at all.”

But that was exactly what Ishmael felt it did, though how he could not yet have told.  Although he never doubted what he heard, it seemed to him like a dream that he had dreamt long ago and forgotten.  It was a curious sense of unreality that impressed him most, that feeling of “This cannot really have happened to me ...” that everyone knows in the first moment of disaster.  It was this sensation, not any temporising or actual disbelief, that kept him still motionless, staring.  Polkinghorne began to feel the proprieties outraged by this immobility.

“I say,” he began, “you can’t take no notice ...; he’s said things about your people, you know—­about your mother ...”

For in common with many male creatures, men and boys, Polkinghorne, though not feeling more than others any particular sentiment beyond affection for his mother, yet held the point of honour, perhaps dating from ancient days of matriarchy, that an insult to one’s mother was the deepest to oneself.  Ishmael, too honest to be influenced by this consideration, yet felt constrained by the weight of public opinion.  Also he was still upon the uplift of his mood; his blood tingled the more for the mental shock that had numbed his reasoning faculties.  As in his turn he hit Doughty’s cheek he felt a little glow at his own carelessness of consequences.  Polkinghorne was beginning to feel worried, because seen together it was plain that the big Doughty overtopped Ishmael by nearly a head.  Suddenly he had an inspiration and threw himself between them as Doughty swung out at the younger boy, thereby incidentally getting the blow himself.

“I’ll lick you for that later, Doughty,” he ejaculated.  “Meanwhile, kindly shut up while I say something.  Ruan can’t fight you—­”

“Can’t he?  Then what did he hit me for?”

“I can fight him all right, thanks,” said Ishmael.

“But he can wrestle you,” went on Polkinghorne imperturbably, “because he’s a clever wrestler and he’ll stand a fair chance.  You can take it or leave it, but if you leave it I’ll give you a thrashing for the honour of the school.”

A murmur of assent came from the others, who saw an impossibly difficult situation thus in a way to be solved as far as the two principals in the quarrel were concerned, while to themselves it gave time to adjust their attitude, which they did not all take as simply as had Killigrew.  In a fight Doughty’s superior size would have given him all the advantage; in the West Country method of wrestling this would not necessarily hold true.  And Ishmael was in far better condition.