"Oh, I am sure you could not have been that, Dick," she said confidently.
"I was indeed, Annie. I think the only thing I could do well was fighting. I was a beggar to fight--not because I used to quarrel with fellows, but because it made me hard and tough, and my mother thought that it would make me more fit to carry out this search for my father."
"What did you fight with--swords?" Annie asked.
Dick laughed.
"No, no, Annie, when we quarrel in England we fight with our fists."
"What is a fist? I never heard of that weapon."
"That is a fist, Annie. You see, it is hard enough to knock a fellow down, though it does not very often do that; but it hurts him a bit, without doing him any harm, except that it may black his eyes or puff up his face for a day or two--and no boy minds that. It accustoms one to bear pain, and is a splendid thing for teaching a boy to keep his temper, and I believe it is one reason why the English make such good soldiers. It is a sort of science, you see, and one learns it just as people here learn to be good swordsmen. I had lessons, when I was twelve years old, from a little man who used to be a champion lightweight--that is, a man of not more than a certain weight."
Annie looked doubtful for a minute, and then exclaimed:
"Ah, yes, I understand now. That is how it is you came to our help so quickly and bravely, when the tiger burst in."
"I daresay it had something to do with it," Dick said, with a smile. "There is no doubt that boxing, as we call it, does make you quick. There is not much time to waste in thinking how you are to stop a blow, and to return it at the same moment. One gets into the habit of deciding at once what is the best thing to be done; and I have no doubt that I should not have seen, at once, that one must cut through the netting, run to the window, jump on to Surajah's shoulders, and fire at the tiger, unless I had been sharpened up by boxing. I only say I suppose that, because there were, no doubt, hundreds of men looking on who had pluck enough to face the tiger, and who would have gladly done the thing that we did, if the idea had occurred to them. The idea did not occur to them, you see, and I have no doubt that it was just owing to that boxing that I thought of it. So you see, Annie, it was, in a way, the fights I had with boys at Shadwell--which is the part of London where I lived--that saved you, and perhaps half a dozen ladies of the sultan's harem, from being killed by that tiger.