“I don’t know, Lomax. When the new master’s done thumping Latin and Euclid into us.”
“Humph! Well, gentlemen, I hear that the Romans were very fine soldiers, and Euclid’s all about angles and squares, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, they’re right enough in infantry formation—squares are, and the angles in fortification, which is a thing I don’t know much about, having been in the cavalry; but when you are ready, so am I, and I’ll set you up and make men of you as your fa—” he glanced at me and pulled himself up short—“as your people shall be proud of.”
“That’s right, Lom, and I’ll bring you some prime tobacco soon as I can. I say, you can fight, can’t you?”
“Well,” he said, smiling and drawing himself up, “they used to say I could once upon a time. There’s my old sword hanging up over the chimney-piece, and if it could speak—”
“Yes, yes, I know, and you’ve been wounded,” cried Mercer hastily; “but I don’t mean with swords and pistols, I mean with your fists.”
“Oh, I see. Boxing.”
“Yes,” cried Mercer eagerly.
And I was still so dull and confused by the knocking about I had received, that I had not a glimmer of what he was aiming at.