“Better,” said Flanagan, “and your collar too.”
This was awful! My collar was a paper one, and pinned on to the shirt in two places!
“No!” I cried, in desperation at these officious offers; “let me alone, please.”
“Oh, all serene! But he’s got the pull of you.”
Perhaps if I had had a clean linen shirt on, with studs down the front, I might have been more tractable in the matter of peeling.
It had by this time gradually dawned on me that I was in for a fight, and that there was no getting out of it. My adversary was bigger than I was, and evidently far more at home with the customs of the prize-ring. I would fain have escaped, but what could I do?
Meanwhile the table was hurriedly pushed into a corner of the room and the chairs piled up in a heap.
“Now then!” cried the Field-Marshal, who, in some miraculous manner, now appeared as backer to the fellow with whom a few minutes ago he had been quarrelling—“now then, aren’t you ready there?”
“Yes,” said Flanagan, rolling up my shirt-sleeves; “all ready! Now then, old man, straight out from the shoulder, you know. Keep your toes straight, and guard forward. Now then—there!”
I was in for it then; and, being in for it, the only thing was to go through with it, and that I determined to do.