Mr. Butson was perhaps a shade relieved when he returned home that night and found all quiet, and Johnny in bed.  He had half expected that his inopportune return might have caused trouble.  But the night after, as he came from the railway station, a little earlier than usual, Johnny stopped him in the street.

“I want to speak to you,” he said.  “Just come round by the dock wall.”

His manner was quiet and businesslike, but Mr. Butson wondered.  “Why?” he asked.  “Can’t you tell me here?”

“No, I can’t.  There are too many people about.  It’s money in your pocket if you come.”

Mr. Butson went.  What it meant he could not imagine, but Johnny usually told the truth, and he said it would be money in his pocket—a desirable disposition of the article.  The dock wall was just round a corner.  A tall, raking wall at one side of a sparsely lit road that was empty at night, and a lower wall at the other; the road reached by a flight of steps rising from the street, and a gateway in the low wall.

p. 245“Well, what is it now?” Mr. Butson asked, suspiciously, as Johnny stopped under a gas-lamp and looked right and left along the deserted road.

“Only just this,” Johnny replied, with simple distinctness.  “You wanted mother to give you my money every week, though in fact she’s been letting me keep it.  Well, here’s my last week’s money”—he shook it in his hand—“and I’ll give it you if you’ll stand up here and fight me.”

“What?  Fight you?  You?”  Mr. Butson laughed; but he felt a secret uneasiness.

“Yes, me.  You’d rather fight a woman, no doubt, or a lame girl.  But I’m going to give you a change, and make you fight me—here.”  Johnny flung his jacket on the ground and his hat on it.

“Don’t be such a young fool,” quoth Mr. Butson loftily.  “Put on your jacket an’ come home.”

“Yes—presently,” Johnny replied grimly.  “Presently I’ll go home, and take you with me.  Come, you’re ready enough to punch my mother, without being asked; or my sister.  Come and punch me, and take pay for it!”

Mr. Butson was a little uncomfortable.  “I suppose,” he sneered, “you’ve got a knife or a poker or somethin’ about you like what you threatened me with before!”

“I haven’t even brought a stick.  You’re the sort o’ p. 246coward I expected, though you’re bigger than me and heavier.  Come—” he struck the man a heavy smack on the mouth.  “Now fight!”

Butson snarled, and cut at the lad’s head with the handle of his walking stick.  But Johnny’s arm straightened like a flash, and Butson rolled over.

“What I thought you’d do,” remarked Johnny, seizing his wrist and twisting the stick away.  “Now get up.  Come on!”

Mr. Butson sat and gasped.  He fingered his nose gently, and found it very tender, and bleeding.  He seemed to have met a thunderbolt in the dark.  He turned slowly over on his knees, and so got on his feet.

“Hit me—come, hit me!” called Johnny, sparring at him.  “Fancy I’m only my mother, you cur!  Come, I’m hitting you—see! ............