u everything you ought to know to become an officer and
a gentleman."

"Oh, bother!" I said. "Look here, Lomax; you're to teach me riding.
Can you?"

"Can I?" he said, with a little laugh; "wait till the horse comes round,
and I'll show you, my boy."

"I can ride, you know," I said; "but not military fashion."

"You? you ride, sir?" said the old soldier scornfully. "Rubbish! Don't
talk to me. I know how you ride--like a sack of wool with two legs.
Knees up to your chin and your nose parting the horse's mane all down
his neck."

"Oh, nonsense, Lom!"

"Fact, sir, fact. Think I don't know? A civilian rides, sir, like a
monkey, bumping himself up and down, and waggling his elbows out like a
young chicken learning to fly. There, you be easy, and I'll teach you
how to ride same as I did how to fight."

"But I don't know that you have taught me how to fight. I haven't tried
yet."

Lomax chuckled.

"Wait a bit," he said. "You don't want to fight. It's like being a
soldier--a British soldier, sir. He don't want to fight, and he will
not if he can help it. He always hangs back because he knows that he
can fight. But when he does--well, I'm sorry for the other side."

"Then you think I could lick Eely if he knocked me about, or big
Dicksee?"

"No, I don't think anything about it, my boy. You wait. Don't fight if
you can help it, but if you're obliged to, recollect all I've shown you,
and let him have it."

I did not feel in any hurry, and when I talked to Tom Mercer about what
I had said to Lomax, he agreed with me that he felt a little nervous
about his powers, and said that he should like to try a small boy or two
first; but I said no, that would not do; it would be cowardly.

"So it would," said Mercer; "besides, it would let the cat out of the
bag, wouldn't it? Look here, I know: we ought to have a quiet set to up
in the loft some day."

"But that would only be boxing," I said.

"Why not make a fight of it?" suggested Mercer.

"But we couldn't fight without there was a genuine quarrel."

"Let's quarrel, then."

"What about?"

"Oh, I don't know. Anything. You call me a fool, and I'll hit you, and
then you go at me again, and we should know then what we could do."

"Get out!" I said. "I shan't call you a fool; but if I did, you
wouldn't be such a beast as to hit me, and if you did, I should be so
sorry that I shouldn't hit you again. That wouldn't do."

Tom Mercer scratched his