“You? you ride, sir?” said the old soldier scornfully. “Rubbish! Don’t talk to me. I know how you ride—like a sack of wool with two legs. Knees up to your chin and your nose parting the horse’s mane all down his neck.”
“Oh, nonsense, Lom!”
“Fact, sir, fact. Think I don’t know? A civilian rides, sir, like a monkey, bumping himself up and down, and waggling his elbows out like a young chicken learning to fly. There, you be easy, and I’ll teach you how to ride same as I did how to fight.”
“But I don’t know that you have taught me how to fight. I haven’t tried yet.”
Lomax chuckled.
“Wait a bit,” he said. “You don’t want to fight. It’s like being a soldier—a British soldier, sir. He don’t want to fight, and he will not if he can help it. He always hangs back because he knows that he can fight. But when he does—well, I’m sorry for the other side.”
“Then you think I could lick Eely if he knocked me about, or big Dicksee?”
“No, I don’t think anything about it, my boy. You wait. Don’t fight if you can help it, but if you’re obliged to, recollect all I’ve shown you, and let him have it.”
I did not feel in any hurry, and when I talked to Tom Mercer about what I had said to Lomax, he agreed with me that he felt a little nervous about his powers, and said that he should like to try a small boy or two first; but I said no, that would not do; it would be cowardly.
“So it would,” said Mercer; “besides, it would let the cat out of the bag, wouldn’t it? Look here, I know: we ought to have a quiet set to up in the loft some day.”