-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