I hit him there, and he felt it.
“That’s my ultimatum,” he rejoined, and he began cutting his pencil ferociously.
“Larpent,” said I, after two or three painful endeavours to articulate, “you are carrying the joke a little too far — you are, upon my honour.”
“You think so, do you?” he returned, throwing away his pencil. “Well, to convince you that I am perfectly serious, you see this,” and he drew from his breast-pocket a small blue-barrelled pistol inlaid with silver.
“If you don’t give up your ridiculous pretensions quietly, my friend,” was his remark, “you must take your chance of a bullet-hole, that’s all. I don’t want anything unreasonable, but if you insist on crossing my path in this little affair, down you go—pop!”
“Not if we fire at one another with— cross-bows,” said I, maliciously, for only two days before we had a shooting-match at a blacking-bottle, and Larpent was beaten hollow. “However, I don’t want to take an unfair advantage— choose your own weapon — I’m ready and willing.”
The West Indian put his pistol back in his pocket, and took my hand.
“Bonser,” he said, with affected kindness, “I have a respect for you and consideration for your - mother, but really you mustn’t stand in my light.”
“Stand in your light!” I exclaimed, fiercely. “You are standing in mine. Who spoke to Amelia first? I’ve known her since I was a child — almost.”
Larpent burst out laughing.
“Why, Bonser, what are you now?” Then, without waiting for my reply, he said:
“Give me this acrostic, promise not to write any more, and I’ll present you with a dozen splendid cigars.”
“Hang your cigars!” I cried. “Disgusting Cabanas! — they would make me sick.”
“ Very well, then you mean to fight?”
“I do.”
“If you should prefer horse-pistols,” said Larpent, pulling on his lemon-coloured gloves, “I have got a brace in my trunk up-stairs ready loaded.”
A sudden rush of pupils into the school-room, singing in chorus “Ride Britannia,” prevented my sanguinary rival from proceeding further with his warlike demonstrations. Intelligence had just arrived of the battle of Navarino; and Wapshaw, who loved his country, and used to expatiate in our rural walks upon England’s naval supremacy, had, in a fit of enthusiasm, given permission to the boys to sing national airs, for half an hour before supper. I am sure he forgot that vocal exercises invigorate the appetite, or he would never have granted this musical licence.
All night long I lay awake with my eyes fixed on the black leathern trunk with brass nails beneath Larpent’s bed. Notwithstanding my lofty tone when confronting my Creole enemy, I had not made up my mind to fight him, but I resolved to maintain a bold front. Accordingly, when Larpent came up to me next day in the cricket-ground, and coolly asked me if I was ready to die for Amelia, I answered sullenly, “ I am,” and followed him at his command with long and rapid strides. We had nearly reached the coppice at the extremity of the ground, where Larpent proposed the duel should take place, when a tennis ball came ricocheting behind us, and struck me in my spine. On turning round I perceived a knot of boys gathered round McPhun, the old Scotch gardener of College House, and who hailed us to come back with gesticulations of such earnestness as indicated that something alarming had happened.
I was very glad to obey this peremptory sum- mons, and on my way met Blobbins, with tears streaming from his little eyes.
“Have you heard about poor old Crump?” he said, wiping his cheeks with a tattered pocket- handkerchief.
“No,” said I “Has he been knocked down again by a painter’s ladder?”
“Worse,” replied Blobbins, sucking an orange to calm his emotion: “he has fell beneath a load of bricks.”
“What, crushed! ” I exclaimed.
“Reg’larly,” said Blobbins, weeping afresh, and adding, with inconceivable tenderness, “We shall never, Bonser, taste such buns again.”
I turned away from this heartless voluptuary with feelings of mingled pity and disdain, and joined the noisy crowd which encircled McPhun, the old Scotch gardener, and eagerly questioned him about poor Crump’s catastrophe. From his narrative it seemed that Crump, having scraped together a little money in the Original Bun House, had unwisely invested it in land for building purposes, and, like many other sanguine speculators, had overbuilt himself. This Blobbins figuratively described as being crushed beneath a load of bricks. To accelerate his downfall he had become surety for a particular friend of the family, whose health was so infirm that he could not leave Boulogne when his promissory note became due. The consequence was, that execution had been issued against Crump, who was seized by the sheriff, while another hostile force, with that officer’s authority, marched into the Original Bun House, and garrisoned it by command of Crump’s principal creditor, a hot- headed brick-maker.
This was sad news indeed.
“And what’s become of poor little Mely, Mac? ” demanded College House, with its forty- five voices harmoniously rolled into one.
“I hear,” replied McPhun, “that she has taken a situation as barmaid at the 'Marquis o' Granby.'”
College House fell back as if its forty-five pillars had been shaken by an earthquake. Amelia, so graceful, innocent, and fair, to let herself down behind the bar of an ordinary commercial inn! Such degradation was enough to cause a sympathetic sinking in every manly breast.
Blobbins whispered to me in my extremity what he deemed words of consolation:
“Couldn’t we go to the 'Marquis’ together, Bonser, and have a pint of early purl?”
I looked at him distrustfully, and felt confident by his retreating manner that he was profoundly ignorant of the nature of that matutinal
beverage. He confessed afterwards that he fancied