After lessons she made him tell her a story; and Taffy, who wished to be amusing, told her about the “Valiant Tailor who killed Seven at a Blow.” To his disgust, it scarcely made her smile. But after this she was always asking for stories, and always listened solemnly, with her dark eyes fixed on his face. She never seemed to admire him at all for his gift, but treated it with a kind of indulgent wonder, as if he were some queer animal with uncommon tricks. This dashed Taffy a bit, for he liked to be thought a fine fellow. But he went on telling his stories, and sometimes invented new ones for her. George Vyell was much more appreciative. Sir Harry had heard of the lessons, and wrote to beg that his son might join the class. So George rode over three times a week to learn Latin, which he did with uncommon slowness. But he thought Taffy’s stories stunning, and admired him without a shade of envy. The two boys liked each other; and when they were alone Taffy stood an inch or two higher in self-conceit than when Honoria happened to be by. But he took more pains with his stories if she was listening. As for her lessons, Honoria got through them by honest plodding. She never quite saw the use of them, but she liked Mr. Raymond. She learnt more steadily than either of the boys.
One day George rode over with two pairs of boxing-gloves dangling from his saddle. After lessons he and Taffy had a try with them, in a clearing behind the shrubberies where the gardener had heaped his sweepings of dry leaves to rot down for manure.
“But, look here,” said George, after the first round; “you’ll never learn if you hit so wild as that. You must keep your head up, and watch my eyes and feint.”
Taffy couldn’t help it. As soon as ever he struck out, he forgot that it was not real fighting. And he felt ashamed to look George straight in the face, for his own eyes were full of tears of excitement. At the end of the bout, when George said, “Now we must shake hands; it’s the proper thing to do,” he looked bewildered for a moment. It made George laugh in his easy way, and then Taffy laughed too.
After this they had a bout almost every day; and he was soon able to hold his own and treat it as sport. But somehow he always felt a passion behind it, whispering to him to put some nastiness into his blows, especially when Honoria came to look on. And yet he liked George far better than he liked Honoria. Indeed, he adored George, and the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings when George appeared were the bright spots in his week. Lessons were over at twelve o’clock; by one o’clock Taffy had to be home for dinner. Loneliness filled the afternoons, but the child peopled them with extravagant fancies. He and George were crusaders sworn to defend the Holy Sepulchre, and bound by an oath of brotherhood, though George was a Red Cross Knight and he a plain squire; and after the most surprising adventures Taffy received the barbed and poisoned arrow intended for his master, and died most impressively, with George and Honoria, and Richard Coeur de Lion, and most of the characters from “Ivanhoe,” sobbing round his bed. There was a Blondel variant too, with George imprisoned in a high tower; and a monstrous conglomerate tale in which most of the heroes of history and romance played second fiddle to George, whose pre-eminence, though occasionally challenged by Achilles, Sir Lancelot, or the Black Prince, was regularly vindicated by Taffy’s timely help.
This tale, with endless variations, actually lasted him for two good years. The scene of it never lay among the towans, but round about his old home or the well-remembered meadow at Tewkesbury. That was his plain of Troy, his Field of Cressy, his lists of Ashby de la Zouche. The high road at the back of the towans crossed a stream, by a ford and a footbridge; and the travelling postman, if he had any letters for the Parsonage, would stop by the footbridge and blow a horn. He little guessed what challenges it sounded to the small boy who came running for the post.
The postman came by, as a rule, at two o’clock or thereabouts. One afternoon in early spring Mr. Raymond happened to be starting for a walk when the horn was blown, and he and Taffy went to meet the post together. There were three or four letters which the Vicar opened; and one for Humility, which he put in his pocket. In the midst of his reading, he looked up, smiled over his spectacles, and said:
“Oxford has won the boat-race.”
Taffy had been deep in the Fifth Aeneid for some weeks, and boat-racing ran much in his mind.
“Who is Oxford?” he asked.