Sutherland major, by the way, had just left Merivale when the War broke out, and he instantly went into the O.T.C.'s and soon became a second lieutenant and went to France.
This father of Sutherland was a lawyer, and Sutherland regretted to say that the War had done him harm as, owing to it apparently, people were not going to law nearly so much as usual. Still he thought, after the War, he might find a great improvement. He was a lawyer of the sort called a barrister, and wore a wig and gown and pleaded for criminals before the judges and juries on the Western Circuit, often getting them off when it looked jolly bad for them--so Sutherland said.
But my father was quite different, being a gentleman at large, and funnily enough, owing to the War, he made the first money he had ever made in his life, for he had a great knowledge of horses, and the War Office, hearing of this, let him go out and choose and buy horses for it, which he willingly did, and for his trouble he got the enormous sum of a guinea a day!
My mother sent me a sovereign of my father's earnings and told me to keep it and bore a hole in it and put it on my watch-chain, and be proud of it; but this I did not do, because a sovereign is a sovereign, and I simply couldn't see a good sovereign wasting its time, so to speak, on my watch-chain.
Then one day, walking as usual with Sutherland on the way to a footer match in which we were both playing, both being in the first "soccer" team, him at right back and me at right half, we got talking about a fight I rather hoped to have with Briggs. And Sutherland was trying to think of a casus belli which, in English, means a reason for the fight. But, knowing Briggs, he said no casus belli would ever arise; and I said in that case, if Briggs were willing, we might fight for a purse, if anybody would subscribe one.
And then Sutherland reminded me that I should become a "pro," and Briggs also, if that were done.
He said:
"Briggs wouldn't fight just for the sake of fighting, and as you and he are very good friends, and there's no 'needle' in it, it looks difficult."
Then we talked, and then he happened to say--about fighting in general and weights and so on:
"You might just as well think of licking him"--speaking of Hutchings, who had gone to the Front--"as you might of licking me."