"Well, good-evening, all!" Then he hooked it—rather thankfully. And we wished we could.
We got four on each hand, and two thousand lines each, and to stop in for two half-holidays. So that, as Methuen very truly remarked, was first blood for Cherry Ripe.
II
Of course, this was merely the beginning of the great anti-Cherry Ripe feeling, and next term we were planning a deadly revenge with regard to Cherry Ripe's Kentish cobnuts, which were remarkably fine, when a great assistant came to our aid in the shape of Trelawny. This was that Trelawny who had such a terrible end in the matter of the protest of the wing dormitory. But many things happened first. He was fourteen, and a fighter from the beginning. All his relations were also fighters, and poetry had been made about one, who was condemned to death for magnificent fighting in historic times. This Trelawny, by the most curious accident, proved to know an immense deal about Cherry Ripe. And it came out that Trelawny's father, who was a retired soldier and only a colonel, though Trelawny said that if justice had been done he would be a general at least, actually owned miles of land about Merivale, including Cherry Ripe's nursery garden and the field.
"The beggar merely rents it from my father for so many pounds a year," said Trelawny. "Why, if I said a word to my father, I could have the man turned out altogether, and his daughters and everybody. I'll jolly soon teach him!"
This was a pretty good score for us, and we soon arranged to show Cherry Ripe that things were changed. Trelawny took to strolling about in Cherry Ripe's field as if it belonged to him; and, of course, as I pointed out to Trelawny, when his father died, though I hoped it would not be for ten years at least—still he had to—and when he did, the field and the orchard and everything would actually be Trelawny's own, to do what he liked with. He said it was so; and he said that he should jolly soon clear Cherry Ripe out, and build almshouses for old soldiers broken in the wars, when he came to have the ground. He wouldn't take nuts or anything. He said that was paltry; but he had a fixed idea that he ought to be perfectly free of the place, and he went on strolling about in it till at last Cherry Ripe surprised him down at the pond in the field. I was there, too, but Cherry Ripe didn't recognize me, which, no doubt, was lucky.
He seemed to have something on his mind, for he didn't get into a bate, but merely said—
"Now, you boys, you slope off to your playground—can't have you messing about here."
"Perhaps you don't know who you're talking to, Mr. Jenkins," said Trelawny in a frightfully grand tone of voice.
Then Cherry Ripe jumped.