Page:A Child of the Jago - Arthur Morrison.djvu/166

 wait a little. Leary and Perrott stepped out. The last of the tossers stuffed away his coppers and sought for a hold on the fence.

"They're a-sparrin', mother!" cried Dicky, pale and staring, elbows and legs a-work, till he was like to pitch out of window. From his mother there but jerked a whimpering sob, which he did not hear.

The sparring was not long. There was little of subtlety in the milling of the Jago; mostly no more than a rough application of the main hits and guards, with much rushing and ruffianing. What there was of condition in the two men was Josh's: smaller and shorter, he had a certain hard brownness of hide that Leary, in his heavy opulence of flesh, lacked, and there was a horny quality in his face and hands that reminded the company of his boast of invulnerability to anything milder than steel; also his breadth of chest was