cept the kind
suggestion to make the loss good."

There was a great hubbub and loud protestations, but Crawley was firm.
His honour was at stake, he said, and he must repay the money himself;
then his traducers at all events could not say that he had profited by
holding the office of treasurer. Those who had indulged in idle
innuendoes were heartily ashamed and sorry, and Gould for a short time
was the most unpopular boy in the school. Crawley cut him dead.

The day following this special meeting was Saturday, exactly one week
after the robbery, and the day appointed for the football match between
the houses of Head-master and Cookson. I fear that a detailed account
of this match would hardly interest you, for this reason. The Head-
master, whose scholarship and capacity worked up Weston to that state of
prosperity which it has maintained ever since, was an Etonian, and the
games instituted under his auspices were played according to Eton rules.
Dr Jolliffe had also been educated at the same school, and thought
everything connected with it almost sacred. So it happened that the
Rugby game of hand-and-football had never supplanted the older English
pastime, which it has now become so much the fashion to despise, and
which, indeed, if it were not for the Eton clubs at Oxford, Cambridge,
and elsewhere, might disappear as the national rats did before the
Hanoverian. The Westonians then used round, not oblong footballs; their
object was to work the ball between the goal-posts, not over a bar at
the top of them; and it was unlawful to touch it with the hands unless
caught in the air, and then only for a drop-kick.

I do not advocate one game more than the other; both to my thinking are
excellent, and I have no sympathy with those who would suppress every
pastime which is fraught with some roughness and danger. The tendency
of civilisation is naturally towards softness, effeminacy, and a dread
of pain or discomfort; and these evils are far more serious than
bruises, sprains, broken collar-bones, or even occasionally a more
calamitous accident.

However, the chances are that my reader is all in favour of the Rugby
game, and would therefore follow the changes and chances of the present
match with but little interest. It was exciting enough, however, to
those who were engaged in it, for Cookson's made a better fight of it
than their opponents expected. They had been practising with great
pains, and their team worked