“But we’ve got no sticks.”
“I know where there’s two sticks,” said Peter. “Under the stairs. And we can fight in the shrubbery over by the fence.”
The sticks were convenient little canes. “They ought to have hilts,” said young Winterbaum. “You ever fenced?”
“Not much,” said Peter guardedly.
“I’ve often fenced with my cousin, the honourable Ralph—you know. Like this—guard. One. Two. You’ve got to have a wrist.”
They repaired to the field of battle. “We stand aside while the seconds pace out the ground,” explained young Winterbaum. “Now we shake hands. Now we take our places.”
They proceeded to strike fencer-like attitudes. Young Winterbaum suddenly became one of the master swordsmen of the world, but Peter was chiefly intent on where he should hit young Winterbaum. He had got to hit him and hurt him a lot, or else he would get Joan. They crossed swords. Then young Winterbaum feinted and Peter hit him hard on the arm. Then young Winterbaum thrust Peter in the chest, and began to explain at once volubly that Peter was now defeated and dead and everything conclusively settled.
But nobody was going to take away Peter’s Joan on such easy terms. Peter, giving his antagonist no time to complete his explanation, slashed him painfully on the knuckles. “I’m not dead,” said Peter, slashing again. “I’m not dead. See? Come on!”
Whereupon young Winterbaum cried out, as it were with a trumpet, in a loud and grief-stricken voice. “Now I shall hurt you. That’s too much,” and swiped viciously at Peter’s face and raised a weal on Peter’s cheek. Whereupon Peter, feeling that Joan was slipping from him, began to rain blows upon young Winterbaum wherever young Winterbaum might be supposed to be tender, and young Winterbaum began to dance about obliquely and cry out, “Mustn’t hit my legs. Mustn’t hit my legs. Not fair. Oo-oh! my knuckles!” And after one or two revengeful slashes at Peter’s head which Peter—who had had his experiences with Joan in a rage—parried with an uplifted arm, young Winterbaum turned and ran—ran into the arms of Miss Murgatroyd, who had been attracted to the shrubbery by his cries....
It was the first fight that had ever happened in the school of St. George and the Venerable Bede since its foundation.