d be rather rot
playing it without you."

"I don't know that so much. I wish we could play, because I'm certain,
with you and Smith, we'd walk into them. They probably aren't sending
down much of a team, and really, now that you and Smith are turning
out, we've got a jolly hot lot. There's quite decent batting all the
way through, and the bowling isn't so bad. If only we could have given
this M.C.C. lot a really good hammering, it might have been easier to
get some good fixtures for next season. You see, it's all right for a
school like Wrykyn, but with a small place like this you simply can't
get the best teams to give you a match till you've done something to
show that you aren't absolute rotters at the game. As for the schools,
they're worse. They'd simply laugh at you. You were cricket secretary
at Wrykyn last year. What would you have done if you'd had a challenge
from Sedleigh? You'd either have laughed till you were sick, or else
had a fit at the mere idea of the thing."

Mike stopped.

"By jove, you've struck about the brightest scheme on record. I never
thought of it before. Let's get a match on with Wrykyn."

"What! They wouldn't play us."

"Yes, they would. At least, I'm pretty sure they would. I had a letter
from Strachan, the captain, yesterday, saying that the Ripton match
had had to be scratched owing to illness. So they've got a vacant
date. Shall I try them? I'll write to Strachan to-night, if you like.
And they aren't strong this year. We'll smash them. What do you say?"

Adair was as one who has seen a vision.

"By Jove," he said at last, "if we only could!"

CHAPTER LVII

MR. DOWNING MOVES

The rain continued without a break all the morning. The two teams,
after hanging about dismally, and whiling the time away with
stump-cricket in the changing-rooms, lunched in the pavilion at
one o'clock. After which the M.C.C. captain, approaching Adair,
moved that this merry meeting be considered off and himself and
his men permitted to catch the next train back to town. To which
Adair, seeing that it was out of the question that there should be
any cricket that afternoon, regretfully agreed, and the first
Sedleigh _v_. M.C.C. match was accordingly scratched.

Mike and Psmith, wandering back to the house, were met by a damp
junior from Downing's, with a message that Mr. Downing wished to see
Mike as soon as he was changed.

"What's he want me for?" inquired Mike.

The messenger did not