"I've heard enough about women to make me sick of the name of female this night," he said. "I won't utter a word more about 'em, living or dead. Thank my stars I kept single anyway. They may be all right in their proper place, but they don't know the meaning of fair play, and are worse than useless in every branch of sport that man ever invented. You mark me: this man's sister will come across the ring and try to gouge our eyes out if her brother's getting worsted!"
"Not she," promised the 'Dumpling.' "I grant 'tis a sign the P.R.'s coming to nought that a chap should have his sister to second him in a fight; but since it had to be, never was a woman built more likely to give a good account of herself in that place than Rhoda Bowden."
"Well, I hope to God the Fancy will rise like one man," answered Mr. Fogo. "And now I'll go to my bed; and if I don't have a nightmare and dream that I'm in a Ring along with the Queen of England and a few duchesses and other high female characters, may I be blowed from here to the top of Paul's cathedral and back again."
He then retired.
Bowden and Crocker had both paid for their colours and Mr. Shillabeer called his friend back to hand him the money, which, in his misery, Mr. Fogo had forgotten.
CHAPTER XII
FOR THE GOOD CAUSE
Probably the Prince of Darkness himself had won little more profound attention than Mr. Fogo when, in his cape and black knee-breeches, the old sportsman attended divine service on the following Sunday. Those interested entirely attributed the forthcoming fight to him, and many of the mothers and grandmothers of the hamlet would have been well pleased to mob 'Frosty-face' and drive him by force of arms from the village.
One painful interview with Bartley Crocker's mother he had not been able to escape. She offered him ten pounds in gold to prevent the fight, and when he explained that not for a hundred or a thousand pounds would he be party to a 'cross,' she had 'given him a bit of her mind and threatened him with her ten commandments,' as he afterwards expressed it.
And now Mr. Fogo, supported by Mr. Shillabeer, sat at worship, answered the responses and even essayed to join in the hymns. The behaviour of both old men was marked by highest propriety; and both put a penny in the plate when it reached them. The Bowdens, including David, were also present, and Mr. Fogo's sole acts of inattention were caused by the circumstance that Rhoda sat beside her father. He stole several glances at her and observed a powerful, handsome young woman, exceedingly self-possessed and apparently well able to keep her nerve under any circumstances. He admitted to the 'Dumpling' that in an ordinary emergency or difficulty Miss Bowden might probably hold her own; but a prize-fight was not an ordinary emergency, and he held that, under no conceivable tangle of circumstances, should a woman, in any capacity whatsoever, be present at such a proceeding.