“Now, then,” said Algernon, squaring up to his cousin in good style, “now’s the time for that unwholesome old boy underneath to commence groaning.”

“Step as light as you can,” replied Edward, meeting him with the pretty motion of the gloves.

“I’ll step as light as a French dancing-master.  Let’s go to Paris and learn the savate, Ned.  It must be a new sensation to stand on one leg and knock a fellow’s hat off with the other.”

“Stick to your fists.”

“Hang it!  I wish your fists wouldn’t stick to me so.”

“You talk too much.”

“Gad, I don’t get puffy half so soon as you.”

“I want country air.”

“You said you were going out, old Ned.”

“I changed my mind.”

Saying which, Edward shut his teeth, and talked for two or three hot minutes wholly with his fists.  The room shook under Algernon’s boundings to right and left till a blow sent him back on the breakfast-table, shattered a cup on the floor, and bespattered his close flannel shirt with a funereal coffee-tinge.

“What the deuce I said to bring that on myself, I don’t know,” Algernon remarked as he rose.  “Anything connected with the country disagreeable to you, Ned?  Come! a bout of quiet scientific boxing, and none of these beastly rushes, as if you were singling me out of a crowd of magsmen.  Did you go to church yesterday, Ned?  Confound it, you’re on me again, are you?”

And Algernon went on spouting unintelligible talk under a torrent of blows.  He lost his temper and fought out at them; but as it speedily became evident to him that the loss laid him open to punishment, he prudently recovered it, sparred, danced about, and contrived to shake the room in a manner that caused Edward to drop his arms, in consideration for the distracted occupant of the chambers below.  Algernon accepted the truce, and made it peace by casting off one glove.

“There! that’s a pleasant morning breather,” he said, and sauntered to the window to look at the river.  “I always feel the want of it when I don’t get it.  I could take a thrashing rather than not on with the gloves to begin the day.  Look at those boats!  Fancy my having to go down to the city.  It makes me feel like my blood circulating the wrong way.  My father’ll suffer some day, for keeping me at this low ebb of cash, by jingo!”

He uttered this with a prophetic fierceness.

“I cannot even scrape together enough for entrance money to a Club.  It’s sickening!  I wonder whether I shall ever get used to banking work?  There’s an old clerk in our office who says he should feel ill if he missed a day.  And the old porter beats him—­bangs him to fits.  I believe he’d die off if he didn’t see the house open to the minute.  They say that old boy’s got a pretty niece; but he don’t bring her to the office now.  Reward of merit!—­Mr. Anthony Hackbut is going to receive ten pounds a year extra.  That’s for his honesty.  I wonder whether I could earn a reputation for the sake of a prospect of ten extra pounds to my salary.  I’ve got a salary! hurrah!  But if they keep me to my hundred and fifty per annum, don’t let them trust me every day with the bags, as they do that old fellow.  Some of the men say he’s good to lend fifty pounds at a pinch.—­Are the chops coming, Ned?”