“Drummond thought Linton was better. He didn’t know I boxed.”
“But—this is very curious. I don’t understand it at all. You see, if you were not up to House form, you would hardly—At Aldershot, you see, you would meet the best boxers of all the public schools.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was a pause.
“It was like this, sir,” said Sheen nervously. “At the beginning of the term there was a bit of a row down in the town, and I got mixed up in it. And I didn’t—I was afraid to join in. I funked it.”
Mr Spence nodded. He was deeply interested now. The office of confessor is always interesting.
“Go on, Sheen. What happened then?”
“I was cut by everybody. The fellows thought I had let the house down, and it got about, and the other houses scored off them, so I had rather a rotten time.”
Here it occurred to him that he was telling his story without that attention to polite phraseology which a master expects from a boy, so he amended the last sentence.
“I didn’t have a very pleasant time, sir,” was his correction.
“Well?” said Mr Spence.
“So I was a bit sick,” continued Sheen, relapsing once more into the vernacular, “and I wanted to do something to put things right again, and I met—anyhow, I took up boxing. I wanted to box for the house, if I was good enough. I practised every day, and stuck to it, and after a bit I did become pretty good.”
“Well?”
“Then Drummond got mumps, and I wrote to him asking if I might represent the house instead of him, and I suppose he didn’t believe I was any good. At any rate, he wouldn’t let me go in. Then Joe—a man who knows something about boxing—suggested I should go down to Aldershot.”
“Joe?” said Mr Spence inquiringly.
Sheen had let the name slip out unintentionally, but it was too late now to recall it.
“Joe Bevan, sir,” he said. “He used to be champion of England, light-weight.”
“Joe Bevan!” cried Mr Spence. “Really? Why, he trained me when I boxed for Cambridge. He’s one of the best of fellows. I’ve never seen any one who took such trouble with his man. I wish we could get him here. So it was Joe who suggested that you should go down to Aldershot? Well, he ought to know. Did he say you would have a good chance?”
“Yes, sir.”
“My position is this, you see, Sheen. There is nothing I should like more than to see the school represented at Aldershot. But I cannot let anyone go down, irrespective of his abilities. Aldershot is not child’s play. And in the Light-Weights you get the hardest fighting of all. It wouldn’t do for me to let you go down if you are not up to the proper form. You would be half killed.”
“I should like to have a shot, sir,” said Sheen.
“Then this year, as you probably know, Ripton are sending down Peteiro for the Light-Weights. He was the fellow whom Drummond only just beat last year. And you saw the state in which Drummond came back. If Drummond could hardly hold him, what would you do?”
“I believe I could beat Drummond, sir,” said Sheen.
Mr Spence’s eyes opened wider. Here were brave words. This youth evidently meant business. The thing puzzled him. On the one hand, Sheen had been cut by his house for cowardice. On the other, Joe Bevan, who of all men was best able to judge, had told him that he was good enough to box at Aldershot.
“Let me think it over, Sheen,” he said. “This is a matter which I cannot decide in a moment. I will tell you tomorrow what I think about it.”
“I hope you will let me go down, sir,” said Sheen. “It’s my one chance.”
“Yes, yes, I see that, I see that,” said Mr Spence, “but all the same—well, I will think it over.”
All the rest of that evening he pondered over the matter, deeply perplexed. It would be nothing less than cruel to let Sheen enter the ring at Aldershot if he were incompetent. Boxing in the Public Schools Boxing Competition is not a pastime for the incompetent. But he wished very much that Wrykyn should be represented, and also he sympathised with Sheen’s eagerness to wipe out the stain on his honour, and the honour of the house. But, like Drummond, he could not help harbouring a suspicion that this was a pose. He felt that Sheen was intoxicated by his imagination. Every one likes to picture himself doing dashing things in the limelight, with an appreciative multitude to applaud. Would this mood stand the test of action?
Against this there was the evidence of Joe Bevan. Joe had said that Sheen was worthy to fight for his school, and Joe knew.
Mr Spence went to bed still in a state of doubt.
Next morning he hit upon a solution of the difficulty. Wandering in the grounds before school, he came upon O’Hara, who, as has been stated before, had won the Light-Weights at Aldershot in the previous year. He had come to Wrykyn for the Sports. Here was the man to help him. O’Hara should put on the gloves with Sheen and report.
“I’m in rather a difficulty, O’Hara,” he said, “and you can help me.”
“What’s that?” inquired O’Hara.
“You know both our light-weights are on the sick list? I had just resigned myself to going down to Aldershot without any one to box, when a boy in Seymour’s volunteered for the vacant place. I don’t know if you knew him at school? Sheen. Do you remember him?”
