ents, I lodge a protest. If you
really feel that you want to scrap, for goodness' sake do it where
there's some room. I don't want all the study furniture smashed. I know
a bank whereon the wild thyme grows, only a few yards down the road,
where you can scrap all night if you want to. How would it be to move on
there? Any objections? None. Then shift ho! And let's get it over."

26

CLEARING THE AIR

Psmith was one of those people who lend a dignity to everything they
touch. Under his auspices the most unpromising ventures became somehow
enveloped in an atmosphere of measured stateliness. On the present
occasion, what would have been, without his guiding hand, a mere
unscientific scramble, took on something of the impressive formality of
the National Sporting Club.

"The rounds," he said, producing a watch, as they passed through a gate
into a field a couple of hundred yards from the house gate, "will be of
three minutes' duration, with a minute rest in between. A man who is
down will have ten seconds in which to rise. Are you ready, Comrades
Adair and Jackson? Very well, then. Time."

After which, it was a pity that the actual fight did not quite live up
to its referee's introduction. Dramatically, there should have been
cautious sparring for openings and a number of tensely contested rounds,
as if it had been the final of a boxing competition. But school fights,
when they do occur--which is only once in a decade nowadays, unless you
count junior school scuffles--are the outcome of weeks of suppressed bad
blood, and are consequently brief and furious. In a boxing competition,
however much one may want to win, one does not dislike one's opponent.
Up to the moment when "time" was called, one was probably warmly
attached to him, and at the end of the last round one expects to resume
that attitude of mind. In a fight each party, as a rule, hates
the other.

So it happened that there was nothing formal or cautious about the
present battle. All Adair wanted was to get at Mike, and all Mike wanted
was to get at Adair. Directly Psmith called "time," they rushed together
as if they meant to end the thing in half a minute.

It was this that saved Mike. In an ordinary contest with the gloves,
with his opponent cool and boxing in his true form, he could not have
lasted three rounds against Adair. The latter was a clever boxer, while
Mike had never had a lesson in his life. If Adair had kept away and used
his head, n