It was one of those bad days when one sits in the pavilion, damp and depressed, while figures in mackintoshes, with discoloured buckskin boots, crawl miserably about the field in couples.
Mike, shuffling across to school in a Burberry, met Adair at Downing’s gate.
These moments are always difficult. Mike stopped—he could hardly walk on as if nothing had happened—and looked down at his feet.
“Coming across?” he said awkwardly.
“Right ho!” said Adair.
They walked on in silence.
“It’s only about ten to, isn’t it?” said Mike.
Adair fished out his watch, and examined it with an elaborate care born of nervousness.
“About nine to.”
“Good. We’ve got plenty of time.”
“Yes.”
“I hate having to hurry over to school.”
“So do I.”
“I often do cut it rather fine, though.”
“Yes. So do I.”
“Beastly nuisance when one does.”
“Beastly.”
“It’s only about a couple of minutes from the houses to the school, I should think, shouldn’t you?”
“Not much more. Might be three.”
“Yes. Three if one didn’t hurry.”
“Oh, yes, if one didn’t hurry.”
Another silence.
“Beastly day,” said Adair.
“Rotten.”
Silence again.
“I say,” said Mike, scowling at his toes, “awfully sorry about your wrist.”
“Oh, that’s all right. It was my fault.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Oh, no, rather not, thanks.”
“I’d no idea you’d crocked yourself.”
“Oh, no, that’s all right. It was only right at the end. You’d have smashed me anyhow.”
“Oh, rot.”
“I bet you anything you like you would.”
“I bet you I shouldn’t…. Jolly hard luck, just before the match.”
“Oh, no…. I say, thanks awfully for saying you’d play.”
“Oh, rot…. Do you think we shall get a game?”
Adair inspected the sky carefully.
“I don’t know. It looks pretty bad, doesn’t it?”
“Rotten. I say, how long will your wrist keep you out of cricket?”
“Be all right in a week. Less, probably.”
“Good.”
“Now that you and Smith are going to play, we ought to have a jolly good season.”
“Rummy, Smith turning out to be a cricketer.”
“Yes. I should think he’d be a hot bowler, with his height.”
“He must be jolly good if he was only just out of the Eton team last year.”
“Yes.”
“What’s the time?” asked Mike.
Adair produced his watch once more.
“Five to.”
“We’ve heaps of time.”
“Yes, heaps.”
“Let’s stroll on a bit down the road, shall we?”
“Right ho!”
Mike cleared his throat.
“I say.”
“Hullo?”
“I’ve been talking to Smith. He was telling me that you thought I’d promised to give Stone and Robinson places in the–-“
“Oh, no, that’s all right. It was only for a bit. Smith told me you couldn’t have done, and I saw that I was an ass to think you could have. It was Stone seeming so dead certain that he could play for Lower Borlock if I chucked him from the school team that gave me the idea.”
“He never even asked me to get him a place.”
“No, I know.”
“Of course, I wouldn’t have done it, even if he had.”
“Of course not.”
“I didn’t want to play myself, but I wasn’t going to do a rotten trick like getting other fellows away from the team.”
“No, I know.”
“It was rotten enough, really, not playing myself.”
“Oh, no. Beastly rough luck having to leave Wrykyn just when you were going to be captain, and come to a small school like this.”
The excitement of the past few days must have had a stimulating effect on Mike’s mind—shaken it up, as it were: for now, for the second time in two days, he displayed quite a creditable amount of intuition. He might have been misled by Adair’s apparently deprecatory attitude towards Sedleigh, and blundered into a denunciation of the place. Adair had said “a small school like this” in the sort of voice which might have led his hearer to think that he was expected to say, “Yes, rotten little hole, isn’t it?” or words to that effect. Mike, fortunately, perceived that the words were used purely from politeness, on the Chinese principle. When a Chinaman wishes to pay a compliment, he does so by belittling himself and his belongings.
He eluded the pitfall.
“What rot!” he said. “Sedleigh’s one of the most sporting schools I’ve ever come across. Everybody’s as keen as blazes. So they ought to be, after the way you’ve sweated.”
Adair shuffled awkwardly.
“I’ve always been fairly keen on the place,” he said. “But I don’t suppose I’ve done anything much.”
“You’ve loosened one of my front teeth,” said Mike, with a grin, “if that’s any comfort to you.”
“I couldn’t eat anything except porridge this morning. My jaw still aches.”
For the first time during the conversation their eyes met, and the humorous side of the thing struck them simultaneously. They began to laugh.
“What fools we must have looked!” said Adair.
“You were all right. I must have looked rotten. I’ve never had the gloves on in my life. I’m jolly glad no one saw us except Smith, who doesn’t count. Hullo, there’s the bell. We’d better be moving on. What about this match? Not much chance of it from the look of the sky at present.”
“It might clear before eleven. You’d better get changed, anyhow, at the interval, and hang about in case.”
“All right. It’s better than doing Thucydides with Downing. We’ve got math, till the interval, so I don’t see anything of him all day; which won’t hurt me.”
“He isn’t a bad sort of chap, when you get to know him,” said Adair.
“I can’t have done, then. I don’t know which I’d least soon be, Downing or a black-beetle, except that if one was Downing one could tread on the black-beetle. Dash this rain. I got about half a pint down my neck just then. We sha’n’t get a game to-day, of anything like it. As you’re crocked, I’m not sure that I care much. You’ve been sweating for years to get the match on, and it would be rather rot playing it without you.”
“I don’t know that so much. I wish we could play, because I’m certain, with you and Smith, we’d walk into them. They probably aren’t sending down much of a team, and really, now that you and Smith are turning out, we’ve got a jolly hot lot. There’s quite decent batting all the way through, and the bowling isn’t so bad. If only we could have given this M.C.C. lot a really good hammering, it might have been easier to get some good fixtures for next season. You see, it’s all right for a school like Wrykyn, but with a small place like this you simply can’t get the best teams to give you a match till you’ve done something to show that you aren’t absolute rotters at the game. As for the schools, they’re worse. They’d simply laugh at you. You were cricket secretary at Wrykyn last year. What would you have done if you’d had a challenge from Sedleigh? You’d either have laughed till you were sick, or else had a fit at the mere idea of the thing.”
Mike stopped.
“By jove, you’ve struck about the brightest scheme on record. I never thought of it before. Let’s get a match on with Wrykyn.”
“What! They wouldn’t play us.”
“Yes, they would. At least, I’m pretty sure they would. I had a letter from Strachan, the captain, yesterday, saying that the Ripton match had had to be scratched owing to illness. So they’ve got a vacant date. Shall I try them? I’ll write to Strachan to-night, if you like. And they aren’t strong this year. We’ll smash them. What do you say?”