. 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 humour 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. to-morrow?"

Mike did not reply at once. He was feeling better disposed towards
Adair and Sedleigh than 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 a man a bit in 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 some beautiful flower that
withers in