"But if you did," continued Margaret, "you see I am nearly through. I can't take another seat, for I'll lose the angle. I can finish in an hour if you will please give me this place to-night. You can work just as well by sitting a few feet farther along."
The lithographer, without replying, turned from her impatiently, bent over his easel, picked up a fresh bit of charcoal and corrected a line on the Milo's shoulder. So far as he was concerned the argument was closed.
Margaret stood patiently. She thought at first he was merely adding a last touch to his drawing before granting her request.
"Will you let me have the seat?" she asked.
"No," he blurted out. He was still bending over his drawing, his eyes fixed on the work. He did not even look up. "I'm going to stay here until I finish.
You know the rules as well as I do. I wouldn't take your seat--what do you want to take mine for?"
There was no animosity in his voice. He spoke as if announcing a fact.
The words had hardly left his lips when there came the sound of a chair being quickly pushed back, and Oliver stood beside Margaret. His eyes were flashing; his right shirt-cuff was rolled back, the bit of charcoal still between his fingers. Every muscle of his body was tense with anger. Margaret's quick instinct took in the situation at a glance. She saw Oliver's wrath and she knew its cause.
"Don't, Mr. Horn, please--please!" she cried, putting up her hand. "I'll begin another drawing.
I see now that I took his seat when he was away, although I didn't know it."
Oliver stepped past her. "Get up, sir," he said, "and give Miss Grant her seat. What do you mean by speaking so to a lady?"
The apprentice--his name was Judson--raised his eyes quickly, took in Oliver's tense, muscular figure standing over him, and said, with a contemptuous wave of the hand:
"Young feller--you go and cool off somewhere, or I'll tell the professor. It's none of your business.
I know the rules and--"
He never finished the sentence--not that anybody heard. He was floundering on the floor, an overturned easel and drawing-board lying across his body; Oliver standing over him with his fists tightly clenched.
"I'll teach you how to behave to a lady." The words sounded as if they came from between closed teeth. "Here's your chair, Miss Grant," and with a slight bow he placed the chair before her and resumed his seat with as much composure as if he had been in his mother's drawing-room in Kennedy Square.
Margaret was so astounded. that for a moment she could not speak. Then her voice came back to her. "I don't want it," she cried, in a half-frightened way, the tears starting in her eyes. "It was never mine--I told you so. Oh, what have you done?"
Never since the founding of the school had there been such a scene. The students jumped from their chairs and crowded about the group. The life class, which were at work in another room, startled by the uproar, swarmed out eager to know what had happened and why--and who--and what for. Old Mother Mulligan, who had been posing for the class, with a cloak about her fat shoulders and a red handkerchief binding up her head, rushed over to Margaret, thinking she had been hurt in some way, until she saw the student on the floor, still panting and half-dazed from the effect of Oliver's blow. Then she fell on her knees beside him.
At this instant Professor Cummings entered, and a sudden hush fell upon the room. Judson, with the help of Mother Mulligan's arm, had picked himself up, and. would have made a rush at Oliver had not big sack Bedford stopped him.
"Who's to blame for this?" asked the professor, looking from one to the other.
Oliver rose from his seat.
"This man insulted Miss Grant and I threw him out of her chair," he answered quietly.
"Insulted you!" cried the professor, in surprise, and he turned to Margaret. "What did he say?"
"I never said a word to her," whined Judson, straightening his collar. "I told her the seat was mine, and so it is. That wasn't insulting her."
"It's all a mistake, professor--Mr. Horn did not understand," protested Margaret. "It was his seat, not mine. He began his drawing first. I didn't know it when I commenced mine. I told Mr. Horn so."
"Why did you strike him?" asked the professor, and he turned and faced Oliver.
"Because he had no business to speak to her as he did. She is the only lady we have among us and every man in the class ought to remember it, and every man has since I've been here except this one."
There was a slight murmur of applause. Judson's early training had been neglected as far as his manners went, and he was not popular.
The professor looked searchingly into Oliver's eyes and a flush of pride in the boy's pluck tinged his pale cheeks. He had once thrown a fellow-student out of a window in Munich himself for a similar offence, and old as he was he had never forgotten it.
