"Time is up," cried head-monitor, ere ever I got my breath again; and
when I fain would have lingered awhile on the knee of the boy that held
me. John Fry had come up, and the boys were laughing because he wanted a
stable lanthorn, and threatened to tell my mother.

"Time is up," cried another boy, more headlong than head-monitor. "If we
count three before the come of thee, thwacked thou art, and must go
to the women." I felt it hard upon me. He began to count, one, too,
three--but before the "three" was out of his mouth, I was facing my foe,
with both hands up, and my breath going rough and hot, and resolved to
wait the turn of it. For I had found seat on the knee of a boy sage and
skilled to tutor me, who knew how much the end very often differs from
the beginning. A rare ripe scholar he was; and now he hath routed up the
Germans in the matter of criticism. Sure the clever boys and men have
most love towards the stupid ones.

"Finish him off, Bob," cried a big boy, and that I noticed especially,
because I thought it unkind of him, after eating of my toffee as he
had that afternoon; "finish him off, neck and crop; he deserves it for
sticking up to a man like you."

But I was not so to be finished off, though feeling in my knuckles now
as if it were a blueness and a sense of chilblain. Nothing held except
my legs, and they were good to help me. So this bout, or round, if you
please, was foughten warily by me, with gentle recollection of what my
tutor, the clever boy, had told me, and some resolve to earn his praise
before I came back to his knee again. And never, I think, in all my
life, sounded sweeter words in my ears (except when my love loved me)
than when my second and backer, who had made himself part of my doings
now, and would have wept to see me beaten, said,--