Quietly as possible, so as not to break the interest of the other two, I rose from my seat. But there was really nothing to be seen. The square was nearly empty; only in the centre, under the great street lamps, I noticed two schoolboys who were facing each other in threatening attitude. Could it be this, then, that so fixed the attention of the old colonel?
But having once begun, such is the nature of man, I could not withdraw my attention before knowing whether this threat of a fight would really swell to an outbreak. The boys had just come from afternoon school session; they were still carrying their portfolios under their arms. They may have been of equal age, but one was a head taller than the other. This bigger one, a tall, lank, overgrown schoolboy, with an unpleasant look in his freckled face, was blocking the way of the other, who was short and plump and had an honest face with chubby, red cheeks. The bigger boy seemed to be nagging at the other with taunting words, but by reason of the distance it was impossible to understand what he said. After this had been going on for a while, the quarrel suddenly broke out. Both boys dropped their portfolios to the ground; the little chubby boy lowered his head, as though to ram his opponent in the stomach, and then rushed at him.
“The big fellow there will soon have him in a fix,” now said the colonel, who was earnestly following the movements of the enemy, and who seemed not to approve the tactics of the little chubby boy.
For whom he intended these words it would be hard to say; he spoke them to himself without addressing any one of us.
His prediction was at once justified.
The big fellow dodged the onset of his enemy; the next moment he had his left arm squeezed around the other’s neck, so that the head of the latter was caught as in a noose; he had him, as they say, “in chancery.” With his right hand he gripped the right fist of his opponent, who was trying to pummel him with it on the back, and when he had regularly trapped him and brought him completely under his power he dragged him again and again round and about the lamp-post.
“Clumsy lad,” muttered the old colonel, continuing his monologue, “always to let himself get caught in that way.” He was plainly disappointed in the little chubby boy, and could not endure the long, lanky one.
“They fight that way every day,” he explained, noticing the waiter, to whom he seemed willing to account for his interest in the matter.
Then he turned his face again toward the window.
“Wonder if the little one will turn up!”