dair looked unpleasantly corpse-like.

"_He's_ all right," said Psmith. "In a minute or two he'll be
skipping about like a little lambkin. I'll look after him. You go away
and pick flowers."

Mike put on his coat and walked back to the house. He was conscious of
a perplexing whirl of new and strange emotions, chief among which was
a curious feeling that he rather liked Adair. He found himself
thinking that Adair was a good chap, that there was something to be
said for his point of view, and that it was a pity he had knocked him
about so much. At the same time, he felt an undeniable thrill of pride
at having beaten him. The feat presented that interesting person, Mike
Jackson, to him in a fresh and pleasing light, as one who had had a
tough job to face and had carried it through. Jackson, the cricketer,
he knew, but Jackson, the deliverer of knock-out blows, was strange to
him, and he found this new acquaintance a man to be respected.

The fight, in fact, had the result which most fights have, if they are
fought fairly and until one side has had enough. It revolutionised
Mike's view of things. It shook him up, and drained the bad blood out
of him. Where, before, he had seemed to himself to be acting with
massive dignity, he now saw that he had simply been sulking like some
wretched kid. There had appeared to him something rather fine in his
policy of refusing to identify himself in any way with Sedleigh, a
touch of the stone-walls-do-not-a-prison-make sort of thing. He now
saw that his attitude was to be summed up in the words, "Sha'n't
play."

It came upon Mike with painful clearness that he had been making an
ass of himself.

He had come to this conclusion, after much earnest thought, when
Psmith entered the study.

"How's Adair?" asked Mike.

"Sitting up and taking nourishment once more. We have been chatting.
He's not a bad cove."

"He's all right," said Mike.

There was a pause. Psmith straightened his tie.

"Look here," he said, "I seldom interfere in terrestrial strife, but
it seems to me that there's an opening here for a capable peace-maker,
not afraid of work, and willing to give his services in exchange for a
comfortable home. Comrade Adair's rather a stoutish fellow in his way.
I'm not much on the 'Play up for the old school, Jones,' game, but
every one to his taste. I shouldn't have thought anybody would get
overwhelmingly attached to this abode of wrath, but Comrade Adair
seems to have done it