I strolled into the garden and strolled all over it. It was quite a wilderness, and there were old melon-frames and cucumber-frames in it, which seemed in their decline to have produced a spontaneous growth of weak attempts at pieces of old hats and boots, with now and then a weedy offshoot into the likeness of a battered saucepan.
As I was casting my gaze over these grotesques of unrestrained vegetation, I suddenly found myself, to my great surprise, exchanging a broad stare with a pale young gentleman with red eyelids and light hair.
"Halloa!" said he, "young fellow!"
Halloa being a general observation which I had usually observed to be best answered by itself, I said, "Halloa!" politely omitting young fellow.
"Who let you in?" said he.
"Miss Estella."
"Who gave you leave to prowl about?"
"Miss Estella."
"Come and fight," said the pale young gentleman.
What could I do but follow him? I have often asked myself the question since: but, what else could I do? His manner was so final and I was so astonished, that I followed where he led, as if I had been under a spell.
"Stop a minute, though," he said, wheeling round before we had gone many paces. "I ought to give you a reason for fighting, too. There it is!" In a most baffling manner he instantly slapped his hands against one another, daintily jumped into the air, whirled around, and drove his foot into my stomach.
"Laws of the game!" said he. Here, he skipped from his left leg on to his right. "Regular rules!" Here, he skipped from his right leg on to his left. "Come to the ground, and go through the preliminaries!" Here, he dodged backwards and forwards, and did all sorts of things while I looked helplessly at him.
I was secretly afraid of him when I saw him so dexterous; but, I felt morally and physically convinced that his foot could have had no business in the pit of my stomach, and that I had a right to consider it irrelevant when so obtruded on my attention. Therefore, I followed him without a word, to a retired nook of the garden. Once determining that the environs were suitable for battle, he fell to pulling off, not only his jacket and waistcoat, but his shirt too, in a manner at once light-hearted, businesslike, and bloodthirsty.
Although he did not look very healthy - having pimples on his face, and a breaking out at his mouth - these dreadful preparations quite appalled me. I judged him to be about my own age, but he was much taller, and he had a way of spinning himself about that was full of appearance.
Despite his ostentatious maneuvering, he really was quite agile, and my heart failed me when I saw him squaring at me with every demonstration of mechanical nicety, and eying my anatomy as if he were minutely choosing his bone. I called to mind a defensive stance that Biddy had shown me in our previous session, and assumed the posture in trepidation.
