"Here, that's no way to box. Keep your feet. Here, May, give us a little help."
They pulled the contestants to their feet. Johnny and Bobby were very mussed up and dusty. Johnny's nose was bleeding slightly; Bobby's eye was a trifle swelled. The instant their captors released them, they went at it again, hammer and tongs. They were certainly not angry as enemies are angry, but as certainly for the time being, in the sense that each was grimly resolved on victory, they had ceased to be friends.
How long the combat might have lasted it would be impossible to say. Bobby had never before used his fists, while the aggressive Johnny, at public school, was the hero of many fights. But as long as Carter insisted on no rough-and-tumble this fact gave the elder boy little advantage. The damage that two light-weights can inflict on each other with round-arm blows is inconsiderable, and Bobby was of the sort that punishment merely renders obstinate. Probably sheer lack of breath would in time have called the battle a draw, but all at once Bobby had an idea. So illuminating and sudden was it that for an instant he forgot what he was doing. Johnny closed on him like a tiger beating him with both fists as hard as he could hit. Even then Bobby's thought was not of defence but of explanation.
"Hold on! hold on! quit!" he kept on crying in expostulation. "Wait a minute! I got it!"
It is doubtful if Johnny heard him. Before Carter and May could stop him he had inflicted more damage than the rest of the fight had produced. Bobby's nose too was bleeding, and a huge red bump was swelling on his forehead when finally he was freed.
However, he was not even aware of those trifles.
"Don't you know those two screws—" he began eagerly to Johnny.
But that young gentleman, panting, was not yet emerged from the red haze of combat.
"I licked!" he cried. "Didn't I lick? He quit! He hollered 'nuff, didn't he? I licked the stuffing out of him!"
"O shut up!" said May contemptuously; "or I'll lick the stuffing out of you."