and began to talk.

"I came to St. Cuthbert's to congratulate you," he began.

"It is a confounded swindle," I interrupted.

"But there was such a row in your rooms that I couldn't face it."

"I have never been so sick about anything in my life," I said; and he
looked so miserable that in spite of the comfortable sensation of
having got my blue I meant it.

"It was a vile knock for me, but I don't mind half so much now one of
us is in. Your people will be most awfully glad."

"They will think the committee are mad to leave you out and put me in.
It upsets things altogether."

"Pott's in his fourth year, and I must have another shot, that's all,"
he said.

"You are bound to get your cricket blue," I declared.

"When a man begins to miss getting in as I have done, he very often
keeps on doing it," and he mentioned the names of two or three men who,
with any luck, would have played both cricket and footer against
Cambridge, but were never chosen. "Don't bother about me," he went on,
"but get yourself as fit as possible, and play like blazes at Queen's
Club; you will be doing me a good turn if you play well, because at
present they have got an idea up here that Cliborough fellows can't
play footer. I heard Adamson saying so."

I expressed my opinion of Adamson and went back to college, for I ought
not to have been out after nine o'clock, because my gating would not
finish. But I must say that when the Subby sent for me, and I
explained what had happened, he congratulated me on getting my blue,
and said that under such exceptional circumstances he would excuse my
forgetfulness.

For the next few days I got up and went to bed very early; I ran round
the Parks before breakfast, which took me some time and was a most
dreary occupation, and I kicked a ball about nearly every day. All of
my people went up to town for the match, and Fred and I joined them at
the Langham on the Tuesday night. My mother was dreadfully sorry for
Fred, and Nina seemed to have forgotten that she was nearly grown-up,
and gave herself no airs at all. I think that Fred, who forgave
swindles very quickly, found some consolation in the fact that he was
going to watch the match with Nina, which would have amused me had I
not been so anxious about the morrow.

There cannot be a more cheerless spot in London than the Queen's Club
on a foggy December afternoon, but when I arrived there and found that
we had got to play in semi-darkness my