Page:Lorna Doone - a romance of Exmoor (IA lornadooneromanc691blac).pdf/27

 no skill of my own, until I came to know better; for up to twenty or thirty fights, I struck as nature guided me, no wiser than a father-long-legs in the heat of a lanthorn; but I had conquered, partly through my native strength and the Exmoor toughness in me, and still more that I could not see when I had gotten my bellyful. But now I was like to have that and more; for my heart was down, to begin with; and then Robert Suell was a bigger boy than I had ever encountered, and as thick in the skull and hard in the brain as even I could claim to be.

I had never told my mother a word about these frequent strivings, because she was soft-hearted; neither had I told my father, because he had not seen it. Therefore, beholding me still an innocent-looking child, with fair curls on my forehead, and no store of bad language, John Fry thought this was the very first fight that ever had befallen me; and so when they let him in at the gate, "with a message to the headmaster," as one of the monitors told Cop, and Peggy and Smiler were tied to the railings, till I should be through my business, John comes up to me with the tears in his eyes, and says, "Doon't thee goo for to do it, Jan; doon't thee do it, for gude now." But I told him that now it was much too late to cry off; so he said, "The Lord be with thee, Jan, and turn thy thumb-knuckle inwards."

It is not a very large piece of ground in the angle of the causeways, but quite big enough to fight upon, especially for Christians, who love to be cheek by jowl