My landlady said that she would put the case to the occupant of the spare room, who was already in his new quarters, preparing for supper, but I persuaded her that it would be well for me to be on the spot, and add my arguments to hers.  We went upstairs, and in a dark passage plunged suddenly into a pool of yellow light, gushing from a half-open door.  I hurried forward, step for step with my guide, lest the door should be shut in my face before I could reach it.  Over my hostess’ shoulder, I saw a bare but neat interior; a “coffin” bed, a white-washed wall, and an uncarpeted floor, Mademoiselle Innocentina Palumbo sitting upon it, tailor-fashion, engaged in excavating a large, dark object from a ruecksack.  In front of her stood the Brat, deeply interested in the operation, his curly head bent, his childish little hands on his hips.

He was talking and laughing gaily; but at the sound of footsteps in the passage he glanced up, and, seeing me, stared in haughty surprise, which tipped the scales towards anger.

“Here is a monsieur who is belated on the Pass, and begs” (this was hardly the way in which I would have put it) “that he may be allowed to share your room,” explained our landlady.

“Share my room!” repeated the Brat, so dumfounded at the simple statement that he spoke in English.  Now I knew that he was a countryman, not of mine, but of Molly’s, and I wished that she were here to deal with him.  “I have never heard anything so—­so ridiculous.”

“Really,” said I, assuming an air I had found successful with freshers in good old days of under-grad-dom (Molly called it my “belted hearl” manner), “really, I fail to see anything ridiculous in the proposal.  This is an inn, which professes to accommodate travellers.  I have a right to insist upon a bed.”

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.”