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After they began to know him, the coming of Hartigan with his horse was hailed by all with delight. The evenings of these festal days were spent in the gymnasium, when there was an athletic programme with great prominence given to sword play, boxing, and singlestick, in which Hartigan was the king; and here his cup of joy was full.
"Jolly glad I shall be to see him, too. I say, why don't you come and look us up? The mater would be awfully glad, though we've not very showy quarters to ask you to. Ah! that's one of the prints you had in the study at school. Do you remember Reg chipping that corner of the frame with a singlestick?"
"Keep from the door, or I'll put a few peppercorns into your hide." From a chink in the door George recognized him as the very man he had so unceremoniously knocked from his perch and so merrily battered in the bout of singlestick that day on the landing-stage. The fellow answered with a curse and lifted his axe to stave in the door.
At first we declined, and reminded him that he had punished us terribly with gloves and foils and singlestick, and that it would be even worse with knives-he would cut us in pieces! No, he said, he would not dream of hurting us: it would be absolutely safe for us, and for him too, as he didn't for a moment believe that we could touch him with our weapons, no matter how hard we tried.
Some, meantime, went to their homes near at hand, others would amuse themselves with games at ball, archery, singlestick, and the like, in an open space within the moat where others fished. Bertram was not neglected.
Thursdays and Sundays, which were school holidays, were given up specially to lessons in what were known as accomplishments: drawing, music, physical exercises, riding, fencing, singlestick, dancing, &c. In winter time we lived in the Palais-Royal, which then was not at all what it is nowadays.
We have a President who so far forgets the traditions of his office as to beguile his spare moments by whacking the heads of his friends in a game of singlestick. Why not a mayor who plays baseball in the park? What an old fogy you are, Cardington!" "Old!" Cardington echoed ruefully. "My dear bishop! And you baptised my infant head after you came to your Episcopal office!"
Every one was free to make holiday, and Edmund Burgess good-naturedly invited the strangers to come to Mile End, where there was to be shooting at the butts, and a match at singlestick was to come off between Kit Smallbones and another giant, who was regarded as the champion of the brewer's craft.
The master was a fencer, and something of a boxer; he had played at singlestick, and was used to watching an adversary's eye and coming down on him without any of those premonitory symptoms by which unpractised persons show long beforehand what mischief they meditate.
Here, boy, is my father's sword; it hasn't been used since Naseby, but it's a good blade. Thou art a deft hand at quarterstaff and singlestick, though, and I doubt not that thy hands can guard thy head. I need not say, Hugh Parsons, you will, if need be, die for thy master, for I know thou will do it, lad. Now kiss thy mother, boy; and God speed you."
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