“So could I, dad.”
“So you could, Ben. Do you want to feel Ben’s muscle, stranger?”
“No,” answered Noel Brooke smiling. “I would rather not. It might frighten me in advance, you know, and I want to start fair.”
“I guess you’re right. Well, boys, you can begin if you’re ready. I wouldn’t have missed this for ten dollars.”
He sat back and looked on with an air of intense interest, while the two ill-matched antagonists prepared for the trial.
CHAPTER XIX
SCIENCE VERSUS STRENGTH.
Even Gerald felt rather alarmed when he saw the two contestants facing each other. Ben, who reached a height of six feet one, towered above his small antagonist as the spire of Trinity Church towers above surrounding buildings. A difference of six inches makes the difference between a tall man and a short one. Why is it that a man of six feet looks double the size of a man of five, though in reality only one fifth larger? It is an ocular deception which affects every one, but is not readily explained.
“If you want to back out, you kin do so,” said Ben good-naturedly.