Page:Stanwood Pier--Crashaw brothers.djvu/97

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IN VACATION
79

let Edward try the apparatus and to instruct him.

But the time had come at last when Edward was privileged to walk in and make use of the place just as if it were his own gymnasium; when Charles became indeed shy of putting on the boxing-gloves and standing up to him; and when, if Charles taunted Edward with his inferiority on the horizontal bar, Edward could reply by putting the fifty-pound dumbbell straight up from his shoulder and saying,—

“Come on; let’s see you do this.”

The room looked the same as when Edward had last seen it, with the punching-bag suspended in the middle, the foils and boxing-gloves hung on the walls, the chest-weights by the head of the bed, and the trophies, the medals and cups on the mantel-piece; it was all the same except for one quite noticeable addition.

That was a rowing-machine, of the kind that Edward had seen in the gymnasium at St. Timothy’s. There was the little sliding seat