However, Sutherland minor was jolly sporting about it, and thoroughly understood how it must look from my point of view. He even offered to come to Ireland in the Christmas Holidays, if my people would ask him, and fight me again on my own ground. He couldn't say more, but though I gladly accepted the idea of his coming to Ireland, which was a very happy thought on his part, I told him frankly that I should not fight him again at present.
"We may meet some happy day in the Amateur Championships, Sutherland," I said, "if I get large enough and you don't get too large."
"No, Rice," he answered; "for I shall be a heavyweight when I'm twenty, and you at best can never hope to be anything but a welter; but I hope we'll second each other many a time and oft."
PERCY MINIMUS AND HIS TOMMY
There were three Percys at Merivale, and they were all there together; and to masters they were, of course, known as Percy major, Percy minor, and Percy minimus, but we called them "the Three Maniacs."
Though mad, they were nice chaps in a way, and did unexpected things and always interested everybody because of their surprises. They were all very different but very original, owing to their father being a well-known actor. And Percy major was already an actor by nature, and could imitate anything with remarkable exactness, from Dr. Dunston to a monkey on a barrel organ. He could even imitate a hen with chickens, but he was going for much higher flights when he went on the stage, and knew the parts of Hamlet and Macbeth and Richard III by heart; though he said to Travers, and I heard him, that it would probably be many a long day before he got a chance to act these great tragical characters before a London audience. His father, on the contrary, was a comedian, and Blades had once seen him in a pantomime and liked him, and said that he was good.
Percy minor was not going on the stage, though when he liked he could be awfully funny. Only he was generally serious, and meant to be a painter. His great hope was to take likenesses, and he was always practising it, and his school books were full of portraits of chaps and masters. Some you could recognize.
As for Percy minimus, he was the maddest of the lot, and my special friend. We were in the Lower Third; and Forbes minimus was also our special friend. But he chucked Merivale, as his parents went to the Cape of Good Hope and took him, and then Percy and I were left.
Percy never came out much while his brothers were at Merivale, and his only strong point was singing in the choir. At music he was an undoubted dab, and he liked it, and he said that, if his voice turned into anything worth mentioning after it cracked, he should very likely be an opera singer of the first water. And if it failed and fizzled away to nothing after cracking, as treble voices sometimes do, then he was going to be a clergyman--if his father would let him.
He certainly sang like the devil, and Mr. Prowse, our music-master, was fearfully keen on him, and arranged solos in chapel for him. And people came from long distances on Sundays to hear him sing, though old Dunston always thought, when outsiders turned up to the chapel services, it was to hear him preach. But far from it.