The taunts were too true to be forgiven. While he
was in the act of thrashing them, they would roar out instances of his
funking at football, or shirking some encounter with a lout of half his
own size. These things were all well enough known in the house, but
to have his own disgrace shouted out by small boys, to feel that they
despised him, to be unable to silence them by any amount of torture, and
to see the open laugh and sneer of his own associates (who were looking
on, and took no trouble to hide their scorn from him, though they
neither interfered with his bullying nor lived a bit the less intimately
with him), made him beside himself. Come what might, he would make those
boys' lives miserable. So the strife settled down into a personal affair
between Flashman and our youngsters--a war to the knife, to be fought
out in the little cockpit at the end of the bottom passage.
Flashman, be it said, was about seventeen years old, and big and strong
of his age. He played well at all games where pluck wasn't much wanted,
and managed generally to keep up appearances where it was; and having
a bluff, off-hand manner, which passed for heartiness, and considerable
powers of being pleasant when he liked, went down with the school in
general for a good fellow enough. Even in the School-house, by dint of
his command of money, the constant supply of good things which he kept
up, and his adroit toadyism, he had managed to make himself not only
tolerated, but rather popular amongst his own contemporaries; although
young Brooke scarcely spoke to him, and one or two others of the right
sort showed their opinions of him whenever a chance offered.
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