"'We are, above all, a keen school,'" quoted Stone. "Don't you ever play?"
"I have played a bit," said Mike.
"Well, why don't you have a shot? We aren't such flyers here. If you know one end of a bat from the other, you could get into some sort of a team. Were you at school anywhere before you came here?"
"I was at Wrykyn."
"Why on earth did you leave?" asked Stone. "Were you sacked?"
"No. My father took me away."
"Wrykyn?" said Robinson. "Are you any relation of the Jacksons there—J.W. and the others?"
"Brother."
"What!"
"Well, didn't you play at all there?"
"Yes," said Mike, "I did. I was in the team three years, and I should have been captain this year, if I'd stopped on."
There was a profound and gratifying sensation. Stone gaped, and Robinson nearly dropped his teacup.
Stone broke the silence.
"But I mean to say—look here? What I mean is, why aren't you playing?
Why don't you play now?"
"I do. I play for a village near here. Place called Lower Borlock. A man who played against Wrykyn for the Free Foresters captains them. He asked me if I'd like some games for them."
"But why not for the school?"
"Why should I? It's much better fun for the village. You don't get ordered about by Adair, for a start."
"Adair sticks on side," said Stone.
"Enough for six," agreed Robinson.
"By Jove," said Stone, "I've got an idea. My word, what a rag!"
"What's wrong now?" inquired Mike politely.
"Why, look here. Tomorrow's Mid-Term Service Day. It's nowhere near the middle of the term, but they always have it in the fourth week. There's chapel at half past nine till half past ten. Then the rest of the day's a whole holiday. There are always house matches. We're playing Downing's. Why don't you play and let's smash them?"
"By Jove, yes," said Robinson. "Why don't you? They're always sticking on side because they've won the house cup three years running. I say, do you bat or bowl?"
"Bat. Why?"
Robinson rocked on the table.
"Why, old Downing fancies himself as a bowler. You must play, and knock the cover off him."
"Masters don't play in house matches, surely?"
"This isn't a real house match. Only a friendly. Downing always turns out on Mid-Term Service Day. I say, do play."
"Think of the rag."
"But the team's full," said Mike.
"The list isn't up yet. We'll nip across to Barnes's study, and make him alter it."
They dashed out of the room. From down the passage Mike heard yells of "Barnes!" the closing of a door, and a murmur of excited conversation. Then footsteps returning down the passage.
Barnes appeared, on his face the look of one who has seen visions.
"I say," he said, "is it true? Or is Stone rotting? About Wrykyn, I mean."
"Yes, I was in the team."
Barnes was an enthusiastic cricketer. He studied his Wisden, and he had an immense respect for Wrykyn cricket.
"Are you the M. Jackson, then, who had an average of fifty-one point naught three last year?"
"Yes."
Barnes's manner became like that of a curate talking to a bishop.
"I say," he said, "then—er—will you play against Downing's tomorrow?"
"Rather," said Mike. "Thanks awfully. Have some tea?"
11
THE MATCH WITH DOWNING'S
It is the curious instinct which prompts most people to rub a thing in that makes the lot of the average convert an unhappy one. Only the very self-controlled can refrain from improving the occasion and scoring off the convert. Most leap at the opportunity.
It was so in Mike's case. Mike was not a genuine convert, but to Mr. Downing he had the outward aspect of one. When you have been impressing upon a noncricketing boy for nearly a month that (a) the school is above all a keen school, (b) that all members of it should play cricket, and (c) that by not playing cricket he is ruining his chances in this world and imperiling them in the next; and when, quite unexpectedly, you come upon this boy dressed in cricket flannels, wearing cricket boots and carrying a cricket bag, it seems only natural to assume that you have converted him, that the seeds of your eloquence have fallen on fruitful soil and sprouted.
Mr. Downing assumed it.
He was walking to the field with Adair and another member of his team when he came upon Mike.
"What!" he cried. "Our Jackson clad in suit of mail and armed for the fray!"
This was Mr. Downing's No. 2 manner—the playful.
"This is indeed Saul among the prophets. Why this sudden enthusiasm for a game which I understood that you despised? Are our opponents so reduced?"
Psmith, who was with Mike, took charge of the affair with a languid grace which had maddened hundreds in its time, and which never failed to ruffle Mr. Downing.
"We are, above all, sir," he said, "a keen house. Drones are not welcomed by us. We are essentially versatile. Jackson, the archaeologist of yesterday, becomes the cricketer of today. It is the right spirit, sir," said Psmith earnestly. "I like to see it."
"Indeed, Smith? You are not playing yourself, I notice. Your enthusiasm has bounds."
"In our house, sir, competition is fierce, and the Selection Committee unfortunately passed me over."
* * * * *
There were a number of pitches dotted about over the field, for there was always a touch of the London Park about it on Mid-Term Service Day. Adair, as captain of cricket, had naturally selected the best for his own match. It was a good wicket, Mike saw. As a matter of fact the wickets at Sedleigh were nearly always good. Adair had infected the groundsman with some of his own keenness, with the result that that once-leisurely official now found himself sometimes, with a kind of mild surprise, working really hard. At the beginning of the previous season Sedleigh had played a scratch team from a neighboring town on a wicket which, except for the creases, was absolutely undistinguishable from the surrounding turf, and behind the pavilion after the match Adair had spoken certain home truths to the groundsman. The latter's reformation had dated from that moment.
* * * * *
Barnes, timidly jubilant, came up to Mike with the news that he had won the toss, and the request that Mike would go in first with him.
In stories of the "Not Really a Duffer" type, where the nervous new boy, who has been found crying in the changing room over the photograph of his sister, contrives to get an innings in a game, nobody suspects that he is really a prodigy till he hits the Bully's first ball out of the ground for six.
With Mike it was different. There was no pitying smile on Adair's face as he started his run preparatory to sending down the first ball. Mike, on the cricket field, could not have looked anything but a cricketer if he had turned out in a tweed suit and hobnail boots. Cricketer was written all over him—in his walk, in the way he took guard, in his stand at the wicket. Adair started to bowl with the feeling that this was somebody who