On the other hand James could not throw Bertie, because he was afraid of hurting him, else he might have either twitched him down or have lifted him bodily from the floor and taken his feet from under him at any moment.
“That’s no way to wrestle, you great giant,” cried Bertie.
“But you must slack up your arms and give me some chance. How do you think I am ever going to throw you if you won’t let me get near you?”
“I don’t mean you shall; folks don’t wrestle to get thrown, do they? Your grandfather didn’t.”
“But you must give me some chance to get at you or you’ll never learn. How could two men wrestle if one was in the barn and the other in the house; or one here, and the other in Philadelphia? We might as well be.”
Peter flinging himself upon the hay, rolled over and over convulsed with laughter, crying,—
“I’ll bet on James, he’ll hold the ring I’ll be bound, I mean to call grandfather to see the fun.”
“If you do I’ll not try to wrestle again,” said James.
James gradually yielded to the exhortations of Bertie, and permitted him to come near enough to push him over the floor, and it was not long after the wily boy got him to lift his feet till he tripped and threw him.
“There, you see how I did that, now do the same by me.”
It was not long before James got thrown again, but he was all the while gaining knowledge and watching the operations of his opponent, and at last gave Bertie a fair fall. James was evidently much pleased, and Bertie not less so. The former who at first had been dragged into the sport by the influence of his friends, began to take great interest in it, mastered the trips, and locks, and feints, without resorting to main strength, and at length made such progress that Bertie could no longer throw him.
He now began to wrestle with Peter, when he passed through the same experience, being thrown at first, but kept improving till at length Peter could but seldom get him down. Edward Conly and the Nevins boys now came over, and he wrestled with them, beginning now to wrestle at the back, in which mode of wrestling he excelled them all, as in that practice strength, a stiff back and capacity to endure punishment, avail more than agility and sleight.
A small plot of level ground before the schoolhouse, free from stones, and covered with long moss, where the boys were wont to wrestle, was now bare of snow. A wrestling match was got up, and had not been long in progress before Bertie persuaded James to enter the ring. The instant he entered, William Morse stepped in as his antagonist.