“All right; I have just done. Pistols like an officer—same as they uses when they fights duels. Then you walks straight up to him, with your head in the air, and you says to him, ‘You don’t desarve it, sir, but I won’t take any dirty advantage of you; so there’s the pistols,’ you says. ‘Which will you choose? For we are going to settle this little affair.’ Then I’ll tell you how it is. Old Pat Reilly—who was a corporal once, before he was put back into the ranks—I heerd him telling our chaps over their pipes how he went with the doctor of the regiment he was in to carry his tools to mend the one of them who was hurt. He called it—he was an Irishman, you know—a jool; and he said when you fight a jool, and marches so many paces, and somebody—not the doctor, but what they calls the second—only I think Pat made a mistake, because there can’t be two seconds; one of them must be a first or a third—”
“There, Punch, tell me the rest to-morrow.”
“No,” said the boy obstinately; but his voice was growing weaker. “I have just done, and I shall be better then, for what I wanted to say will have left off worrying me. Let’s see what it was. Oh, I know. You stands opposite to your uncle, turns sideways, raises your pistol, takes a good aim at him, and shoots him dead. Now then, what do you say to that?”
“That I don’t want to shoot him dead, Punch.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“Why, isn’t he your enemy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then I suppose that won’t do.”
“I’m afraid not, Punch.”