i

if corkey minor had been at school that term the thing would never have come about; but corkey minor was always one of the lucky chaps, and just when, in the ordinary course of events, he would have had to begin fagging for an exam., something happened to his right lung, and he had to go on an awful fine trip to australia in a sailing ship. that left corkey major, who was a mere learning machine in the sixth, and corkey minimus, who was ten, and in the lower fourth.

it began like this. after bray had licked derbyshire and bethune, which he did one after the other on the same half-holiday, chaps gave him “best,” as a matter of course, and he became cock of the lower 70school. he was solid muscle all through, and harder than stone, and he had a brother in london who was runner-up in the amateur “light-weight” championship two years following. bray fancied himself a bit, naturally, and was always roaming about seeking fellows to punch. but once, out of bounds in a private wood, a keeper caught him and licked him, which was seen by two other fellows, and remembered against bray afterwards when he put on too much side.

he and corkey minimus were in the same class, because bray, though thirteen, didn’t know much. at first they were great chums, and bray bossed corkey and palled with him; and when browne, the under mathematical master, told corkey minimus that he was “the least of all the corkeys, and not worthy to be called a corkey,” because he couldn’t do rule-of-three, or some rot, bray said a thing that browne overheard, and got sent up. but by degrees the friendship of bray and corkey minimus cooled off, and the matter of milly settled it.

the doctor had four daughters, and milly was the youngest. mabel and ethel held 71no dealings with any fellows under the sixth, and mary had something wrong with her spine and didn’t count. but i never cared for any of them myself, because you couldn’t tell what they meant. beatrice, for instance, was absolutely engaged to morris, for he told his sister so in the holidays, and his sister told morris minor, and he told me the next term. morris was the head of the school, and he had her photograph fixed into a foreign nut which he wore on his watch-chain. but when he left, and she found out he was gone into a bank at ￡80 a year, she dropped him like a spider. mind you, morris had told her he was descended, on his mother’s side, from a race of old irish kings, which may have unsettled her. anyway, when she found he came, on his father’s side, from a race of church curates, she wrote and said it was off.

but there were other things that upset the chumming of bray and corkey minimus before the milly row, and they ought to be taken in turn. first, there was the old testament prize, which was the only thing bray had the ghost of a chance of getting. 72but corkey beat him by twenty-three marks; and bray said afterwards that corkey had cribbed a lot of stuff about joshua, and corkey said he hadn’t, and even declared he knew as much about joshua as bray, and a bit over. then, on top of that, came the match with neckties, which was rather a rum match in its way. both of them used to be awfully swagger about their neckties, and each fancied his own. so one bet the other half a crown he would wear a different necktie every day for a month. the month being june, that meant thirty different neckties each, and the chap who wore the best neckties would win. a fellow called fowle was judge, being the son of an artist; and neither bray nor corkey was allowed to buy a single new tie or add to the stock he had in his box. at the end of a fortnight they stood about equal, though corkey’s ties were rather more artistic than bray’s, which were chiefly yellow and spotted. but then came an awful falling away, and some of the affairs they wore were simply weird. the test for these was if the tie passed in class. then the terms of the match were altered, 73and they decided to go on wearing different things till one or other was stopped by a master. any concern not noticed was considered a necktie “in the ordinary acceptation of that term,” as fowle put it. at the end of the third week corkey minimus came out in an umbrella cover done in a sailor’s knot, but nobody worth mentioning spotted it; and the next day bray wore a bit of blue ribbon off a chocolate box, which also passed. they struggled on this sort of way till bray got bowled over. i think corkey was wearing a yard-measure dipped in red ink that morning, but it looked rather swagger than not. class was just ended, when old briggs, of all people--a man who wore two pairs of spectacles at one time very often--said to bray:

“what is that round your neck, boy?” and bray said:

“my tie, sir.”

then briggs said:

“is it, sir? let me see it, please. i have noticed an increasing disorder about your neck arrangements for a week past. you insult me and you insult the class 74by appearing here in these ridiculous ties.”

“it sha’n’t happen again, sir,” said bray, trying to edge out of the class-room.

“no, bray, it shall not,” said old briggs. “bring me that thing at once, please.”

bray handed it up, and briggs examined it as if it was a botanical specimen or something.

“this,” he announced, “is not a necktie at all. you’re wearing a piece of brussels carpet, wretched boy--a fragment of the new carpet laid down yesterday in the doctor’s study. you will kindly take it to him immediately, say who sent you, and state the purpose to which you were putting it.”

so bray, by the terms of the match, lost, and corkey minimus won with the yard measure.

then the feeling between them grew, especially after bray said that he could only pay his half-crown in instalments of a penny a week.

now we come to milly. you see she was corkey minor’s great pal the term before, but now that he was at sea, and thousands 75of miles off, she chucked him and turned to corkey minimus. that shows what she was really. anyway, in a bad moment for young corkey, she told him he had eyes like an eagle’s, and it simply turned his head. as an eagle’s eyes are yellow, i couldn’t see myself what there was to be so jolly pleased about; but he was, and, to show you what a chap may come to if a girl collars him, i know for a fact that corkey minimus tried to paint a picture for her. whether he actually succeeded i cannot say, but he went down four places in class, and got awfully dropped on by browne.

then came that attempt of bray to cut corkey out, and, being myself a tremendous personal chum of corkey’s, i wished he had succeeded; but he didn’t, and even his fighting didn’t take milly. after a month of giving her things to eat and so on, he said it was his red hair that stood between them, and told fowle he didn’t care a straw about her; but from the way he went on to corkey minimus, any fool could see he really cared a lot. the chap called fowle comes in here. this “obscene fowle,” as 76we called him out of virgil, being really a term in a crib applied to harpies, though he would have run if a mouse had squeaked at him, was yet responsible for more fights than any fellow in the school. he sneaked about, asking chaps if they gave one another “best,” and when at last he found two who didn’t funk each other, though they might be perfectly good friends, he never rested until there was a fight. he got kicked sometimes, but not enough. that was owing to the fact that his hampers from home were most extraordinary. they came on roman feast days, because he was a roman catholic by religion; and some fellows even said the more you kicked fowle the more you were likely to get from the hampers. that was rot, of course, and a jolly suspicious thing happened once. newnes--a chap in the lower fifth--kicked fowle the very morning before a hamper came; and that same evening, after prayers, fowle gave newnes about half a whacking big melon, and the next day newnes jolly near died. fowle swore he hadn’t put anything in the melon, but it is bosh to say 77that half a melon, if it’s all right, is going to do a chap any harm. anyway, we rather funked fowle’s hampers afterwards.

well, this wretched, obscene fowle met me one day licking his fat lips and showing great excitement. so i knew he’d probably worked up a fight; but it wasn’t that, though something worse. he said:

“where’s corkey minimus? bray wants him.”

“what for?” i said. i may mention that i am called mcinnes.

“as a matter of fact, he’s heard something, and he says, though he’s sorry, he’s got to lick corkey.”

fowle smacked his beastly mouth as if he’d got pine-apple drops in it.

“what’s corkey done?” i said.

“it’s about milly dunston. young corkey talks jolly big with her, and doesn’t even speak civil of his friends. by quite an accident i was passing through the shrubbery from browne’s house to the chapel yesterday, and i went by the summer-house, which is out of bounds, and couldn’t help overhearing milly and corkey minimus, who 78were there. and corkey distinctly said that bray was as fiery as his hair, and that he had no more control of himself than a burning mountain; and milly laughed.”

“and you sneaked off and told bray?”

“as his chum i had to.”

“ah, then i shall tell corkey what you heard, being his chum.”

“i shouldn’t,” said fowle. “it’s only making mischief. besides, bray won’t take an apology now. he says he’s stood all that flesh and blood can stand. those were his very words. in fact, i’m looking for corkey minimus at this moment to tell him that bray wants him up in the ‘gym.’”

“to lick him?”

fowle smacked his lips again.

“he’s brought it on himself.”

“well,” i said, “i’ll give the message. you can go back and tell bray you’ve told me.”

“i’d rather have done it myself,” said fowle, regretfully, as though he was being robbed of tuck.

“well, you won’t,” i answered him, being pretty sick with the worm of a chap by that 79time. “you go back and say that corkey will turn up in ten minutes.”

then he cleared out reluctantly, leaving this tremendous responsibility entirely on my hands.

ii

i went off there and then for corkey. it’s a bit of a jar for a chap to get a message like that unexpectedly, and i didn’t know what advice to give. corkey major was no good. if i’d told him he would have blinked through his goggles and have said some bosh--very likely in latin. and corkey minor, being thousands of miles away, it looked blue, because you can’t ask anybody but a chap’s own brothers to take up a matter like this. i couldn’t lick bray myself, or i would have.

the next minute i met corkey himself, and, from an awful rum look about him, i thought for a moment he’d had the licking already. but he hadn’t, and before i could speak he said:

“mcinnes, i’ve got to fight bray.”

80“my dear chap, you couldn’t,” i began.

“i know,” he answered, “but i’ve got to. things have happened. listen to this. i’ve just left milly, and she’s in a frightful bate. i shouldn’t have thought a girl could have got in such a rage without hurting herself. bray told fowle that there were as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it--meaning milly; and fowle wrote it on a bit of paper and dropped it where milly was bound to see it. he didn’t put his name, but she knows his writing. now she’s pretty well mad, and says it’s a disgrace that a thick-necked, speckly, stumpy chap like bray should be cock of the lower school. well, i said, very likely it was, but i didn’t see how it could be helped, him being such a fighter. then she tossed her hair about, and said, ‘i won’t have anything more to do with the lower school at all while he’s cock of it.’ of course, i didn’t think she included me, being--well, her greatest pal alive since corkey minor went. so i said, ‘quite right; i shouldn’t look at them.’ then she turned round rather suddenly and said i was included. so i said, ‘i should be only too glad to fight 81him if there was a ghost of a chance, but there isn’t. it’s no good pretending. he’s four inches taller, and miles more round the chest and round the arms, and ages older. in fact, he could lick me with one hand tied behind him.’ then she said, ‘the days of chivalry are dead,’ which she’d got out of a book, of course; and she added that she was tired of all boys, and that a chap with eyes like mine ought to have more ‘devil’ in him. yes, she used that word. i said, ‘what do you want me to do?’ and she said, ‘oh, nothing. i wouldn’t have a hair of your head singed for the world; only i thought that it might interest you more than other people to know i’d been insulted. of course, if it’s nothing to you--’ then she stopped and marched away, and i went after her and asked her to explain, and she answered that the explanation ought to come from me. she said, ‘d’ you ever read dragon stories?’ and i said, ‘yes.’ then she went on, ‘well, in all the ones i’ve read, if a lady asked anybody to kill a dragon, the person didn’t say that the dragon could beat him with one paw tied behind it, even though he thought 82so; but he jolly well went and did the best he could.’ naturally, after that i saw what she meant, and i said, ‘oh, all right, milly; of course, if you’ve been insulted, i must make the beggar apologize--or try to.’ ‘yes,’ she said, cheering up like anything; ‘you are my own precious champion, and i love you.’ i tell you all this because you’re my chum, and you’ll have to be my second. and if i can even black his eye before he settles me, it will be something.”

“well, i call it a chouse,” i said. “she might as well have asked you to fight blanchard or sims. look at your arms, not to mention anything else; they’re like cabbage-stalks.”

“yes, i know all that,” said corkey minimus, “and it’ll be rather rotten for her if he kills me. but the thing’s got to be done, and the sooner it’s over the better.”

then i suddenly remembered bray’s message, and told corkey. he seemed surprised.

“he can’t lick me on the spot if i challenge him to fight in a regular way, can he?” he asked, but rather doubtfully.

i said it seemed to me he couldn’t. then 83we went up to the “gym,” where bray was talking to about four chaps, including fowle.

“oh, you’ve come, you kid, have you? you’d better not keep me waiting another time when i send for you,” he began. “now i’m going to lick you for cheek.”

“what cheek?” corkey minimus said.

“fowle heard you say i was as fiery as my hair.”

“oh, fowle, he hears a lot, i know.”

“did you say it or didn’t you?”

“yes, i did, and i say it again; and you’re a dirty bully too.”

bray came quite close to corkey minimus, and put his face so near that their noses were almost touching, like cats do when they’re going to have a row on a wall.

“say that just once more if it isn’t troubling you too much,” said bray.

“i’ll say it as often as you like,” answered young corkey, keeping his eye on bray’s, “and i’ll say another thing too, which is, that before you talk so big about me being a ‘kid’ and licking me, you’d better find out first if i give you ‘best.’”

84“golly!” said bray, grinning like mad, “don’t you?”

“no, i don’t; and i’ll fight you properly with seconds the first minute we can.”

corkey minimus had certainly come out of it fine so far, and i only wished he could fight as well as he talked. of course, from bray’s point of view, it was the best thing that could have happened, because now he had a right to lick corkey, and a right to lick him as badly as he could. the bell rang a minute afterwards, and going in it was settled the fight should come off next wednesday, that being a half-holiday. part of merivale woods skirted the cricket-field, and as the second eleven, to which bray belonged, wasn’t playing a match, everything suited very comfortably. blanchard, the cock of the school, agreed to umpire, and he and another chap in the fifth very kindly promised to carry young corkey home by a secluded way if he was too much smashed to walk. fowle seconded bray, and i saw bray teaching him how to fan with a towel and spurt water over a fellow’s face between 85the rounds. of course, it was about as good fun as killing rats with a stick for bray.

iii

corkey minimus saw milly once or twice before the fight, and he said he couldn’t make out whether she was going mad or what. one minute she wanted him to fight, the next she implored him not to; one minute she hoped he would mutilate bray to pieces, the next she blubbed and prayed him if ever he had any liking for her to give bray “best.” she said she kept dreaming of him brought back stark and stiff; and then, when he began to think she meant it, she called him her “knight” and her “hero” and her “king arthur” and other frightful rot, and actually wanted him to wear one of her sunday gloves under his shirt at the time of fighting! corkey minimus said he very likely wouldn’t wear a shirt; and then she thought he might hang it--i mean the glove--round his neck by a bit of string!

86“blessed if i shall ever feel quite the same to her after this,” said corkey.

“it seems rather rough to get broken up for life to please a skimpy girl,” i said. then he burst out as red in the face as an apple, and told me he would not hear a word against milly, so i dried up.

there were three days before the fight, and corkey minimus trained for it, and gave away his pudding at dinner in exchange for the meat of the chaps who sat next to him. but you can’t get your muscle up in a day or two like that, and it only made him awfully thirsty.

the day came at last, and i may as well go on to the fight itself. the first were having a big match on our own ground, so nobody paid any attention to us, and we arranged a game that should have corkey, bray, and me on the same side. then, when our chaps were in, we three sneaked away into the plantations, behind some holly-trees and a woodstack. bray arranged all the preliminaries as cheerful as a bird, and blanchard said they were right. they marked out a ring and ran a string round 87and arranged corners for the seconds; and i saw that the obscene fowle had towels and bottles of water and a basin--all, of course, for bray between the rounds. corkey minimus was rather waxy with me for not bringing the same for him; but i’d brought a sponge, which i know is a thing a second chucks up in the air when his man is done for; and i explained and showed it to corkey; and he thanked me and said he supposed that was about the only thing he should want. blanchard said the rounds were to be two minutes long each, and bray grumbled because they ought by rights to be three. but blanchard told him to shut up and begin. when we saw bray take his shirt off i told corkey he ought to, and he did. then blanchard laughed and said:

“by gum! they peel rather different!”

bray was like a barrel, with muscles a lot bigger than hen’s eggs on his arms. corkey minimus seemed to be all ribs somehow, with arms about as lean as rulers. i told him to keep moving about and try and puff bray a bit if he had time, and he said:

“all right, i’ll try. if i can get a smack 88at his face, so as to black an eye or something, and show i’ve hit him before he does for me, i don’t care.”

i will say for corkey minimus that he had about the best pluck i ever saw in a chap. he was quite calm, and just his usual color; and when bray tossed him for corners corkey won; and blanchard said i picked the right corner for him. then he told them to fight fair, and said “time!”

i’d prayed corkey to try and surprise bray at the very start if he could, and have a hit at bray’s face the moment they began. and i’m blessed if he didn’t go and do it! bray began fiddling about jolly scientifically with his hands, and i fancy he just squinted down to see if his feet were scientific too. at the same moment corkey buzzed round his right and let bray have it fairly on the nose. bray jumped and looked about as much surprised as if he’d been struck by lightning; and blanchard said:

“first blood for corkey minimus!”

i yelled--i oughtn’t to have, but i did--because to see blood dropping about on 89bray’s chest was a fine sight. he sniffed and went for corkey smiling. the smile was the beastliest part of it, for i hoped he would have got his wool off a bit and been wild. but he wasn’t, and when he began to hit, corkey got flustered and swung about like a windmill and caught it pretty hot. yet he jerked his head so jolly quick that he didn’t get more than about four smacks on it in the first round, though his body, which was white by nature, was pretty soon covered with red marks. he said they didn’t hurt, and i cleaned him up and blew water over him at the end of the round. his lip was bleeding like mad, but luckily inside, where his tooth had cut it; and he swallowed all the blood, so nobody knew; besides which the blood wasn’t lost. bray flung himself down in his corner, and fowle looked after him; and even at a solemn time like that i laughed, and so did corkey minimus, because fowle tried to be too clever, and spurted a lot of water out of his mouth into bray’s eye. then bray told him that after the fight he’d tie him in knots and kick him, looking forward to 90which, of course, wrecked fowle’s enjoyment entirely.

blanchard said “time!” again awfully soon, and i saw bray meant settling corkey now, because his reputation as a fighter was at stake, and he knew corkey hoped to get through three rounds with luck. so bray began hitting him like hammers, and though i was about as sorry for corkey minimus as a chap could be, nobody would have been able to help admiring the way bray hit. it was just at the end of this round, when corkey had been knocked down once, but got up again, that the awful rum thing with milly dunston happened.

suddenly, without any warning, there was a noise like fowls getting up a hedge, and she rushed out from behind the woodstack with her eyes blazing and her hair streaming like a comet in a bate. she’d been running a good way, i should think, and she tore right into the ring straight at bray, and not trusting to words at a time like that, and not remembering her father was a clergyman, or anything, slapped his face both sides, and jolly hard too. bray swore the 91horriblest words i ever heard used by a chap, because she’d given him more in half a second than corkey could have in a year. then he got into his shirt upside-down and hooked it with fowle, but not before he heard her say:

“you little, fat, red-headed coward to fight and try and murder a boy half your age and size! i wish i could kill you, i do. it’s shameful to think you’re an english boy at all!”

then she turned on the chaps from the fifth, and told blanchard he was a disgrace to the school. so they cleared out too; and then she cried over corkey, and said she would rather have been torn to pieces by unchained monsters than have let him be mangled like he was. and corkey, who was pretty well dazed, forgave her, and told her kindly to go away. and she gasped and gurgled, and went.

i took corkey back, and one or two things got to be known. it came out that fowle had told milly the place and the hour of the fight, but only after she had sworn--on some rotten saint fowle knew--that she would not 92tell a single soul about it. she kept her swear all right, but came herself. and when bray got to hear how it was she came--of course, thinking corkey had told her, which he would rather have died than do--then bray tried a lot of chinese tortures on fowle that he’d seen at a wax-works. and chaps who saw it said that fowle was so excited at the time that he called upon about twenty different well-known bible characters by name to come and help him and destroy bray. but they didn’t.

as for corkey minimus, the things he got from milly after that fight you wouldn’t believe. there were bottles of stuff to rub bruises with, and lozenges and grapes, and some muck for his eye, and little baskets of strawberries, and jolly books and rosebuds. she told the doctor about slapping bray’s face, and wrote a long letter of apology afterwards; and a week later she broke it to corkey minimus that she was going to a boarding-school herself next term; which she did.

when corkey told me about it he added:

“and she’s going to write me letters, because 93she’s said several times that there’s only one chap in the world for her now, and i’m the chap.”

“i shouldn’t think she could change her mind after all that’s happened,” i said.

and corkey minimus said:

“i bet she will when corkey minor turns up again, especially if he brings rum things with him from australia. and you needn’t repeat it, but to you, mcinnes, as my chum, i say that i don’t care how soon he does come back either.”

which showed that there was more sense in corkey minimus than you might have thought.