“It’s hardly fair in a biting frost,” said Cherry; “nobody can have any wind. However, here’s for the honour of Westmoreland.”
The younger ones gathered round in an admiring circle, and Cheriton, who did not like to be beaten, put forth all the strength and skill of which he was master. But he was the more slightly made, and had met his match, and to the extreme chagrin of his brothers and Nettie, sustained an entire defeat.
“Well, I never thought you would throw him,” said Jack, in a tone of deep disappointment.
“Ah,” said Alvar, “they always called me the strong Englishman.”
“Papa was the strongest man in Westmoreland,” said Nettie.
“Then,” said Alvar, “so far I have proved myself his son, and your brother. I would not skate with you, for I should look like a fool; but I knew you could not easily throw me down, since that is your sport. But, my brother, I have hurt you.”
“No,” said Cheriton getting up, “only knocked all the wind out of me, and made me look like a fool! Never mind, we shall understand each other all the better. Come upstairs, and we will show you some of the cups and things we have won in boat-races and athletics.”
This was a clever stroke of Cheriton’s; he wanted to make Alvar free of the premises, and had not yet found a good excuse. So, leaving the younger ones to finish their snowballing, he and Jack conducted Alvar up to the top of the house, where, at the end of the passage where they slept, was a curious low room, with a long, low window, looking west, above the west window of the drawing-room, and occupying nearly one side of the room, almost like the windows of the hand-loom weavers in the West Riding.
There was a low seat underneath, broad enough to lie on, but furnished with very dilapidated cushions. There was a turning-lathe in the room, and a cupboard for guns, and sundry cases of stuffed birds, one table covered with tools, glue-pots, and messes of all descriptions; and another, it is but justice to add, supplied with ink, pens, and paper, and various formidable-looking books, for here the boys did their reading. There was a great, old-fashioned grate with a blazing fire in it, and very incongruous ornaments above it—a stuffed dormouse, Nettie’s property—she maintained a footing in the room by favour—various pipes, two china dogs, white, with brown spots on them, presented to Cherry in infancy by his nurse, and a wooden owl carved by their cousin Rupert—a cousin in the second degree, who had been much with them owing to his father’s early death. On one side of the room were arranged on a sort of sideboard the cups and tankards which were the trophies of the brothers’ prowess, and these were now each pointed out to Alvar, and the circumstances of their acquisition described. Cheriton’s were fewer in proportion, and chiefly for leaping and hurdle-racing; and Jack explained that Cherry’s forte was cricket, and that, since he had once knocked himself up at school by a tremendous flat-race, their father had greatly objected to his going into training.
“Oh, it’s not that,” said Cherry; “he would not care now; but I really haven’t time. I must grind pretty hard from now to midsummer.”