“I told Robarts; my elder brother is very fond of everything connected with sparring, and has got a lot of reports of matches, and I have read all the prize-fights that ever were, I think. I used to take great interest in them, and thought I might remember something which would come in useful. There is a great sameness in these things, you know, and the principles are simple.”
“I am sure I am much obliged to you for offering to be my second; I should have been licked but for you.”
“I don’t know that. I think you would have thought of fighting at his wind when you could not reach his face for yourself, and tired him out anyhow. But if I have been useful I am glad. You took pains to try my bowling when most fellows would have laughed at the idea; and there is the honour of the house too. What I feared was that you would not follow what I said, but persist in trying to bore in.”
“Why,” replied Crawley, laughing, “Saurin backed up your advice with such very forcible and painful examples of the common sense of it, that I should have been very pig-headed not to catch your meaning. But what rot it all is!” he added, looking in the glass. “A pretty figure I shall look at Scarborough, with my face all the colours of the prism, like a disreputable damaged rainbow!”
“There are three weeks yet to the holidays; you will be getting all right again by then,” said Buller.
“I doubt it; it does not feel like it now, at all events,” replied Crawley; and when supper-time came he was still more sceptical of a very speedy restoration to his ordinary comfortable condition. It was an absurd plight to be in; he felt very hungry, and there was the food; the difficulty was to eat it. It hurt his lips to put it in his mouth—salt was out of the question—and it hurt his jaws to masticate it, and it hurt his throat to swallow it. But he got it down somehow, and then came prayers, conducted as usual every evening by Dr Jolliffe, who, when the boys filed out afterwards, told him to remain.
“By a process of elimination I, recognising all the other boys in my house, have come to the conclusion that you are Crawley,” said the doctor solemnly.
“Yes, sir,” replied Crawley.
“Quantum mutatus ab illo! I should not have recognised you. Circumstantial evidence seems to establish the fact that you have engaged in a pugilistic encounter.”
“Yes, sir.”