mrade Adair seems
to have done it. He's all for giving Sedleigh a much-needed boost-up.
It's not a bad idea in its way. I don't see why one shouldn't humor him.
Apparently he's been sweating since early childhood to buck the school
up. And as he's leaving at the end of the term, it mightn't be a scaly
scheme to give him a bit of a send-off, if possible, by making the
cricket season a bit of a banger. As a start, why not drop him a line to
say that you'll play against the M.C.C. tomorrow?"

Mike did not reply at once. He was feeling better disposed toward Adair
and Sedleigh then he had felt, but he was not sure that he was quite
prepared to go as far as a complete climb-down.

"It wouldn't be a bad idea," continued Psmith. "There's nothing like
giving in to a man a bit every now and then. It broadens the soul and
improves the action of the skin. What seems to have fed up Comrade
Adair, to a certain extent, is that Stone apparently led him to
understand that you had offered to give him and Robinson places in your
village team. You didn't, of course?"

"Of course not," said Mike indignantly.

"I told him he didn't know the old _noblesse oblige_ spirit of the
Jacksons. I said that you would scorn to tarnish the Jackson escutcheon
by not playing the game. My eloquence convinced him. However, to return
to the point under discussion, why not?"

"I don't ... What I mean to say ..." began Mike.

"If your trouble is," said Psmith, "that you fear that you may be in
unworthy company--"

"Don't be an ass."

"--Dismiss it. _I_ am playing."

Mike stared.

"You're _what? You_?"

"I," said Psmith, breathing on a coat button, and polishing it with his
handkerchief.

"Can you play cricket?"

"You have discovered," said Psmith, "my secret sorrow."

"You're rotting."

"You wrong me, Comrade Jackson."

"Then why haven't you played?"

"Why haven't you?"

"Why didn't you come and play for Lower Borlock, I mean?"

"The last time I played in a village cricket match I was caught at point
by a man in braces. It would have been madness to risk another such
shock to my system. My nerves are so exquisitely balanced that a thing
of that sort takes years off my life."

"No, but look here, Smith, bar rotting. Are you really any good at
cricket?"

"Competent judges at Eton gave me to understand so. I was told that this
year I should be a certainty for Lord's. But when the cricket season
came, where was I? Gone. Gone like som