When her eyes next turned toward the fighting ring, she saw that two youths in trunk tights had in the interval wriggled through the ropes and seated themselves on the chairs or stools that faced each other at diagonally opposite corners of the enclosure. The gray-trousered young man stepped to that side of the roped arena next the orchestra-pit and, lifting to the audience a face on which the nose had been, by some mishap of the near or remote past, forever pushed sidewise, so that it seemed to recline on the left cheek, said, laconic and loud:
"Ladhies and gentlemen, th' firsth bout on this evenink's programme it will be four two-minutth rounts between Spider Clausewitz—on my right—and Younk Kelly—on my left."
Spider Clausewitz—he on the speaker's right—did not hear the announcement. His chief interest at the moment was in sizing up the pugilistic bargain in the opposite corner with shrewd Semitic slits of eyes. One end of his mouth was tilted up in a calculating way to meet the nostril. His gloves were folded across his waistband; his lean bare back convexed in a negligent arch. If he did not win, he would at least see that he did not lose. He knew that he was master of the situation sufficiently to guarantee that; so Spider's mind was easy.
So, too, in fact was the mind behind Young Kelly's broad-staring, half-grinning, Hibernian countenance. His confidence was expressed in an attitude which was the exact opposite of Spider's. He sat so aggressively erect that his back was concave. His eyes were round and unwinking as those of a young bantam. His pose suggested that he was, as it were, just waiting to be turned loose.
It seemed but a moment after the announcer—who was also the referee—finished his proclamation, till Daisy, with the excitement of the new spectator, saw the two fighting "comers" tearing into each other in the middle of the roped enclosure in a way that made the audience shout with glee. Young Kelly, his black eyes like beads, was giving every ounce of vigor he had to the combat. Clausewitz, though fighting back smartly to avoid giving away anything on points, was more careful in his expenditure of energy. Daisy found herself mentally taking sides with the Irish boy; and it was therefore with delight that presently she saw Spider's head imprisoned tightly in the robust loop of Young Kelly's arm. But Kelly, after playfully threatening the captured head with his glove, turned the Spider loose again. The audience whooped.
Presently, however, Clausewitz also had a chance to show courtesy and, with instinctive shrewdness seized it. A sudden nausea, resulting from some chance blow along the nerve-centres of the spine, unexpectedly made Kelly wilt visibly. His face turned pale-greenish. Perspiration-beads showed across his chest and forehead. His guarding arm wabbled.
Clausewitz saw the situation at a glance. He could have finished his opponent in a second with a stiff blow to the jaw-point. But such a win would gain him nothing in the goodwill of the public, for it was obvious to all those in the seats near the ring that Kelly was sick and practically defenceless.
It is by policy as much as by prowess that the young pugilist climbs to the top. So Spider, cautiously dropping his guard, slid an arm about Kelly and escorted him ostentatiously to the stool in the corner of the roped square. Again the audience cheered.
"Well," said Daisy, clapping her hands with the rest of the spectators as she turned to Miss Yockley, "the lad wasn't mean, was he, after all."