“Oh, I’ll fight you, all right,” Longley was saying. “And I’ll make you wish you’d stuck at home with the other English dubs. Come on down to the boathouse if you want to get what’s coming to you!”
“Right-o,” responded Hugh calmly. “I say, Peet, nip it, like a good chap, will you?”
“Nip what?” gasped Peet.
“Toddle, run along,” elaborated Hugh impatiently.
“N-no, sir, I’m going with you, Ordway, but you’re a fool to fight Longley. Listen, won’t you? He can lick you easily. Why, he’s bigger than you and older and—and he knows how to fight, too! Let’s—let’s beat it!”
But Hugh was already stalking along behind Longley and Bowen, and Peet’s remonstrances fell on deaf ears. Bowen appeared to be rather half-heartedly trying to persuade Longley to turn back, but wasn’t meeting with success. Longley’s big shoulders shrugged impatiently and Hugh heard him say: “Didn’t he call my face unattractive? Well, then!” And Bowen’s reply: “So it is, you silly chump, and what’s the good of scrapping about it?” Peet pegged along at Hugh’s elbow, at once excited and alarmed, hazarding an occasional remonstrance and giggling nervously between. Hugh wished him at the bottom of the river!
The quartette passed the end of the gridiron, on which the unfortunate first team members were still toiling monotonously, crossed the practice field and finally reached the boathouse. Fortunately for their undertaking, there was no one inside nor about the landing, and Bowen led the way around the corner of the old building to where a piece of fairly level sward sloped to the river almost in the shadow of the bridge.
“Now go to it, you idiots,” he said indifferently, “if you have to. But if I sing out, beat it! For I don’t intend to get yanked up before Charlie, even if you do.”
Longley tossed his cap to the ground and impatiently tore off coat and waistcoat, and Hugh, a bit more calmly, similarly divested himself. Then his opponent, scowling ferociously, advanced across the turf, and Hugh squared to meet him.