DIDN'T PLAY CRICKET?" HE ASKED]

When one has been bowling the whole morning, and bowling well, without
the slightest success, one is inclined to be abrupt.

Mike finished unfastening an obstinate strap. Then he looked up.

"I didn't say anything of the kind. I said I wasn't going to play
here. There's a difference. As a matter of fact, I was in the Wrykyn
team before I came here. Three years."

Adair was silent for a moment.

"Will you play for us against the Old Sedleighans to-morrow?" he said
at length.

Mike tossed his pads into his bag and got up.

"No, thanks."

There was a silence.

"Above it, I suppose?"

"Not a bit. Not up to it. I shall want a lot of coaching at that end
net of yours before I'm fit to play for Sedleigh."

There was another pause.

"Then you won't play?" asked Adair.

"I'm not keeping you, am I?" said Mike, politely.

It was remarkable what a number of members of Outwood's house appeared
to cherish a personal grudge against Mr. Downing. It had been that
master's somewhat injudicious practice for many years to treat his
own house as a sort of Chosen People. Of all masters, the most
unpopular is he who by the silent tribunal of a school is convicted
of favouritism. And the dislike deepens if it is a house which he
favours and not merely individuals. On occasions when boys in his
own house and boys from other houses were accomplices and partners
in wrong-doing, Mr. Downing distributed his thunderbolts unequally,
and the school noticed it. The result was that not only he himself,
but also--which was rather unfair--his house, too, had acquired a
good deal of unpopularity.

The general consensus of opinion in Outwood's during the luncheon
interval was that, having got Downing's up a tree, they would be fools
not to make the most of the situation.

Barnes's remark that he supposed, unless anything happened and wickets
began to fall a bit faster, they had better think of declaring
somewhere about half-past three or four, was met with a storm of
opposition.

"Declare!" said Robinson. "Great Scott, what on earth are you talking
about?"

"Declare!" Stone's voice was almost a wail of indignation. "I never
saw such a chump."

"They'll be rather sick if we don't, won't they?" suggested Barnes.

"Sick! I should think they would," said Stone. "That's just the gay
idea. Can't you see that by a miracle we've got a chance of getting a
jolly good bit of our own back against those Downi