CHAPTER TEN.
DESCRIBES A GREAT BATTLE, AND WHAT FOLLOWED.
Perhaps I ought to begin this chapter with an apology.

Perhaps I ought to delude my readers into the belief that it gives me far more pain to describe a fight, than it gave Dick and his antagonist to take part in it.

Perhaps I ought to go back and alter my last chapter, and call in the dogs of war.

Perhaps I should solemnly explain to the reader how much more beautiful it would have been in Dick, if, instead of letting his angry passions rise at the sight of young Aspinall's wrongs, he had walked kindly up to the bully, and laying his hand gently on his shoulder, asked him with a sweet smile, whether he thought that was quite a nice thing for a big boy to do to a small one?
whether his conscience didn't tell him he erred?
and whether he wouldn't go and retire for a quiet hour to his study, and think the matter over with the said conscience?
Then, if, at the end of that time he still felt disposed to use physical force towards the little new boy, would he allow him, Dick, on this occasion to bear the punishment in his young friend's place?
I say, I might, perhaps begin my chapter in this fashion, were it not for two trifling difficulties--one being that I should be a humbug, which it is not my ambition to be; the other, that Dick, too, would have been a humbug, which he certainly was not.
The truth about fighting is--if one must express an opinion on so delicate a subject--that its right and wrong depend altogether on what you fight about.

There are times when to fight is right, and there are a great many more times when to fight is wrong.