As for games, he had no use for them; but he was sporting in his own way. His favourite sport consisted in going out of bounds; and he showed very decent strategy in doing so, and gave even Norris and Booth a tip or two. Norris and Booth had made a fair art of trespassing in private game preserves, at the Manor House and other such places round about Merivale. In fact, game preserves were just common or garden Sunday walks to them. But they had been caught by a gamekeeper once and both flogged; and Wundt showed them how a reverse like that need never have happened. He could turn his coat inside out, and do other things of that sort, which were very deceptive even to the trained gamekeeper eye; and, finding a scarecrow in a turnip field, he took it, and as it consisted of trousers and coat and an old billycock hat, Wundt was now in possession of a complete disguise. He hid the things in a secret haunt, that really belonged to Norris and Booth; and they liked him at first and helped him a good deal; but finally they quarrelled with him, because he said England was a swine’s hole, and told them that a time was coming--he hoped not till he grew up--when England would simply be a Protectorate of Germany, whatever that is. So they invited him to fight whichever he liked of them, and when he refused, though just the right weight, they smacked his head and dared him to go to their secret cave again.
When they smacked his head, his eyes glittered and he smiled, but nothing more. He never would fight with fists, because he said only apes and Englishmen fought with Nature’s weapons. But at single-stick he was exceedingly good, and, in fact, better than anybody in the school but Forrester. He much wished we could use swords and slash each other’s faces, as he hoped to do when he became a student in his own country, and he said it was a mean sight to see old Dunston and Brown and Manwaring and Hutchings and the other masters all without a scratch. He said in Germany every self-respecting man of the reigning classes was gashed to the bone; and decent people wouldn’t know a man who wasn’t, because he was sure to be a shopkeeper or some low class thing like that. As to games, he held them in great contempt. It seems people of any class in Germany only play one game and that’s the war game--_Kriegspiel_, he called it.