“May I hazard the guess that Boyton on that occasion was rather a weapon of offence than of defence?”
“Well, you’re right,” said O’Neill. “Offence is more in Boyton’s line. And he certainly did press heavily, that day, on a butcher’s boy. You remember those slagersjongens that saunter about, in white linen coats, with great protruding baskets on their shoulders. They jostle and push wherever they have a chance, and whirl round with their cargoes of meat, so as to make you start. You know the tribe. Well, Boyton proved an admirable corrective to the insolence of one of these imps.
A HAPPY CROWD.
It was a day there was a sort of festival in the Hague.
From early in the afternoon there was a crush everywhere. The singels and the main roads through the Wood were filled with holiday-makers. Soldiers were parading here and there. Everyone was in the best of good humour; music in the distance rose and fell on the air; flags fluttered from the windows. Look where you might, there were bright dresses, prancing horses, snorting motors, and pedestrians of all descriptions.
I was one of the pedestrians.
I had been at my grammar in the morning; and after a long spell in the house had stepped over to Enderby’s, and coaxed that lazy fellow out for a stroll. It was perfect weather, and the crowds were wonderfully well-behaved. We enjoyed ourselves finely ‘under the green-wood tree,’ till we were brought to a stand-still in a dense mass of humanity that was packed along the edge of a canal, scarcely moving. A procession or something had impeded the traffic some moments.
INNOCENCE IN DANGER.
There was a knot of butchers’ boys right in front of us. They were roughly shoving their neighbours about, and seeing what mischief they could do. Horse play, in fact. They didn’t seem to fit into Boyton’s categories, either of ‘Natives intelligent’ or ‘polite’.
Presently one brawny scoundrel began to throw stones at the occupants of a carriage that was slowly passing by.