“You’re right there, ma’am,” said Jenkins, with a sort of stern approval. “Mr. Leith’s been neglecting his exercises lately.”
“Oh, I’ve been doing a good deal in odd times with the Rifle Corps.”
“I don’t know anything about that, sir.”
“All right, I’ll go and change,” said Dion, who always kept a singlet and flannels at the gymnasium. “Then——” he turned to Mrs. Clarke as if about to say good-by.
“Oh, Jimmy will want to see you for a moment after his bath. We’ll say good-by then.”
“Yes, I should like to see him,” said Dion, and went off to the dressing cubicles.
When he returned ready for the fray, with his arms bared to the shoulder, he found Jimmy, in trousers and an Eton jacket, with still damp hair sleeked down on his head, waiting with his mother, but not to say good-by.
“We aren’t going,” he announced, in a voice almost shrill with excitement, as Dion came into the gymnasium. “The mater was all for a trot home, but Jenkins wishes me to stay. He says it’ll be a good lesson for me. I mean to be a boxer.”
“Why not?” observed the great voice of Jenkins. “It’s the best sport in the world bar none.”
“There!” said Jimmy. “And if I can’t be anything else I’ll be a bantam, that’s what I’ll be.”