said Mike. "As a matter of fact, I do happen to have a
quid. You can freeze on to it, if you like. But it's about all I have
got, so don't be shy about paying it back."

Jellicoe was profuse in his thanks, and disappeared in a cloud of
gratitude.

Mike felt that Fate was treating him badly. Being kept in on Saturday
meant that he would be unable to turn out for Little Borlock against
Claythorpe, the return match. In the previous game he had scored
ninety-eight, and there was a lob bowler in the Claythorpe ranks whom he
was particularly anxious to meet again. Having to yield a sovereign to
Jellicoe--why on earth did the man want all that?--meant that, unless a
carefully worded letter to his brother Bob at Oxford had the desired
effect, he would be practically penniless for weeks.

In a gloomy frame of mind he sat down to write to Bob, who was playing
regularly for the Varsity this season, and only the previous week had
made a century against Sussex, so might be expected to be in a
sufficiently softened mood to advance the needful. (Which, it may be
stated at once, he did, by return of post.)

Mike was struggling with the opening sentences of this letter--he was
never a very ready writer--when Stone and Robinson burst into the room.

Mike put down his pen, and got up. He was in warlike mood, and welcomed
the intrusion. If Stone and Robinson wanted battle, they should have it.

But the motives of the expedition were obviously friendly. Stone beamed.
Robinson was laughing.

"You're a sportsman," said Robinson.

"What did he give you?" asked Stone.

They sat down, Robinson on the table, Stone in Psmith's deck chair.
Mike's heart warmed to them. The little disturbance in the dormitory was
a thing of the past, done with, forgotten, contemporary with Julius
Caesar. He felt that he, Stone and Robinson must learn to know and
appreciate one another.

There was, as a matter of fact, nothing much wrong with Stone and
Robinson. They were just ordinary raggers of the type found at every
public school, small and large. They were absolutely free from brain.
They had a certain amount of muscle, and a vast store of animal spirits.
They looked on school life purely as a vehicle for ragging. The Stones
and Robinsons are the swashbucklers of the school world. They go about,
loud and boisterous, with a wholehearted and cheerful indifference to
other people's feelings, treading on the toes of their neighbor and
shoving him off the