He had just finished his pipe when a youth stopped to read the card
on the doorpost. This youth was attired in a coarse sailor's jersey
and a pair of gray tweed trousers, which he had considerably
outgrown.
"Looking for a job?" inquired the ex-champion of England and the
colonies.
The youth blushed and replied, "Yes. I should like to get something
to do."
Mr. Skene stared at him with stern curiosity. His piofessional
pursuits had familiarized him with the manners and speech of English
gentlemen, and he immediately recognized the shabby sailor lad as
one of that class.
"Perhaps you're a scholar," said the prize-fighter, after a moment's
reflection.
"I have been at school; but I didn't learn much there," replied the
youth. "I think I could bookkeep by double entry," he added,
glancing at the card.
"Double entry! What's that?"
"It's the way merchants' books are kept. It is called so because
everything is entered twice over."
"Ah!" said Skene, unfavorably impressed by the system; "once is
enough for me. What's your weight?"
"I don't know," said the lad, with a grin.
"Not know your own weight!" exclaimed Skene. "That ain't the way to
get on in life."
"I haven't been weighed since I was in England," said the other,
beginning to get the better of his shyness. "I was eight stone four
then; so you see I am only a light-weight."
"And what do you know about light-weights? Perhaps, being so well
educated, you know how to fight. Eh?"
"I don't think I could fight you," said the youth, with another
grin.
Skene chuckled; and the stranger, with boyish communicativeness,
gave him an account of a real fight (meaning, apparently, one
between professional pugilists) which he had seen in England. He
went on to describe how he had himself knocked down a master with
one blow when running away from school. Skene received this
sceptically, and cross-examined the narrator as to the manner and
effect of the blow, with the result of convincing himself that the
story was true. At the end of a quarter of an hour the lad had
commended himself so favorably by his conversation that the champion
took him into the gymnasium, weighed him, measured him, and finally
handed him a pair of boxing gloves and invited him to show what he
was made of. The youth, though impressed by the prize-fighter's
attitude with a hopeless sense of the impossibility of reaching him,
rushed boldly at him several times, knocking his face on each
occasion against Skene's left fist, which seemed to be ubiquitous,
and to have the property of imparting the consistency of iron to
padded leather. At last the novice directed a frantic assault at the
champion's nose, rising on his toes in his excitement as he did so.
Skene struck up the blow with his right arm, and the impetuous youth
spun and stumbled away until he fell supine in a corner, rapping his
head smartly on the floor at the same time. He rose with unabated
cheerfulness and offered to continue the combat; but Skene declined
any further exercise just then, and, much pleased with his novice's
game, promised to give him a scientific education and make a man of
him.