How long we had been struggling and cuffing and hitting (less scientifically but more effectually than when Henrietta and I flourished our stuffed driving gloves, with strict and constant reference to the woodcuts in a sixpenny Boxer’s Guide) before I got slightly stunned, I do not know; when I came round I was lying in Weston’s arms, and Johnson Minor was weeping bitterly (as he believed) over my corpse.  I fear Weston had not allayed his remorse.

My great anxiety was to shake hands with Johnson.  I never felt more friendly towards any one.

He met me in the handsomest way.  He apologized for speaking of my father—­“since you don’t like it,” he added, with an appearance of sincerity which puzzled me at the time, and which I did not understand till afterwards—­and I apologized for calling him a coward.  We were always good friends, and our fight made an end of the particular chaff which had caused it.

It reconciled Rupert to me too, which was my greatest gain.

Rupert is quite right.  There is nothing like being prepared for emergencies.  I suppose, as I was stunned, that Johnson got the best of it; but judging from his appearance as we washed ourselves at the school pump, I was now quite prepared for the emergency of having to defend myself against any boy not twice my own size.

CHAPTER III.

SCHOOL CRICKET—­LEMON-KALI—­THE BOYS’ BRIDGE—­AN UNEXPECTED EMERGENCY.

Rupert and I were now the best of good friends again.  I cared more for his favour than for the goodwill of any one else, and kept as much with him as I could.

I played cricket with him in the school matches.  At least I did not bat or bowl, but I and some of the junior fellows “fielded out,” and when Rupert was waiting for the ball, I would have given my life to catch quickly and throw deftly.  I used to think no one ever looked so handsome as he did in his orange-coloured shirt, white flannel trousers, and the cap which Henrietta made him.  He and I had spent all our savings on that new shirt, for Mother would not get him a new one.  She did not like cricket, or anything at which people could hurt themselves.  But Johnson Major had get a new sky-blue shirt and cap, and we did not like Rupert to be outdone by him, for Johnson’s father is only a canal-carrier.

But the shirt emptied our pockets, and made the old cap look worse than ever.  Then Henrietta, without saying a word to us, bought some orange flannel, and picked the old cap to pieces, and cut out a new one by it, and made it all herself, with a button, and a stiff peak and everything, and it really did perfectly, and looked very well in the sunshine over Rupert’s brown face and glossy black hair.

There always was sunshine when we played cricket.  The hotter it was the better we liked it.  We had a bottle of lemon-kali powder on the ground, and I used to have to make a fizzing-cup in a tin mug for the other boys.  I got the water from the canal.