We washed and dressed with wonderful celerity, and then crept out and down-stairs, to open one of the schoolroom windows, jump out, and close it after us. Then, in the delicious fresh morning, with the trees all dewy, we started off to go through the shrubbery, and were half-way to the lodge, when Mercer caught me by the arm.
“Look!” he said. “Magglin!” and there, going across one of the fields beyond the road, was that individual, with the pockets of his jacket seeming to be sticking out; and the same idea struck us both.
“He’s been poaching!”
But he passed out of sight directly, and we hurried on down to the lodge, to find Lomax standing at the door smoking his morning pipe.
“Five minutes before your time,” he said. “That’s a good sign. You both want to learn, so you’ll learn quickly. Wait a minute, I’ve just done my bad habit. I learned that years ago, and it’s hard to break oneself of it. There, that’ll do,” he continued, lifting up one foot, and bending down, so as to knock the ashes out of his pipe by tapping the bowl on his heel. “Come along! I’ve cleared the decks for you.”
In fact, as we entered the room, we found that the table and chairs had been taken out, and the little square of carpet and hearthrug rolled up together and stood in a corner, while on the window sill lay the two pairs of boxing-gloves, like four hugely swollen giants’ hands, and they looked so ridiculous that we both laughed.
“’Tention!” cried Lomax, shutting and bolting the door. “Business! You can laugh after. Now then, put them on.”
We readily obeyed, and as each glove was put on, Lomax tied them securely in their places by the stout strings at the wrists, and once more our comical aspect was too much for us, and we laughed more uproariously than before.
“’Tention, I say, boys. Silence! Now then, I don’t do so in drilling you, but the best way to teach a man anything is by letting him go his own way, and then correcting his mistakes. Now, are you ready, both of you, and done with your nonsense?”
“Yes, we are quite serious now,” I said.