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Mike

Then the meaning of the notice flashed upon them. The headmaster had acted. This bloated document was the extra lesson list, swollen with names as a stream swells with rain. It was a comprehensive document. It left out little.

“The following boys will go in to extra lesson this afternoon and next Wednesday,” it began. And “the following boys” numbered four hundred.

“Bates must have got writer’s cramp,” said Clowes, as he read the huge scroll.

Wyatt met Mike after school, as they went back to the house.

“Seen the ‘extra’ list?” he remarked. “None of the kids are in it, I notice. Only the bigger fellows. Rather a good thing. I’m glad you got off.”

“Thanks,” said Mike, who was walking a little stiffly. “I don’t know what you call getting off. It seems to me you’re the chaps who got off.”

“How do you mean?”

“We got tanned,” said Mike ruefully.

“What!”

“Yes. Everybody below the Upper Fourth.”

Wyatt roared with laughter.

“By Gad,” he said, “he is an old sportsman. I never saw such a man. He lowers all records.”

“Glad you think it funny. You wouldn’t have if you’d been me. I was one of the first to get it. He was quite fresh.”

“Sting?”

“Should think it did.”

“Well, buck up. Don’t break down.”

“I’m not breaking down,” said Mike indignantly.

“All right, I thought you weren’t. Anyhow, you’re better off than I am.”

“An extra’s nothing much,” said Mike.

“It is when it happens to come on the same day as the M.C.C. match.”

“Oh, by Jove! I forgot. That’s next Wednesday, isn’t it? You won’t be able to play!”

“No.”

“I say, what rot!”

“It is, rather. Still, nobody can say I didn’t ask for it. If one goes out of one’s way to beg and beseech the Old Man to put one in extra, it would be a little rough on him to curse him when he does it.”

“I should be awfully sick, if it were me.”

“Well, it isn’t you, so you’re all right. You’ll probably get my place in the team.”

Mike smiled dutifully at what he supposed to be a humorous sally.

“Or, rather, one of the places,” continued Wyatt, who seemed to be sufficiently in earnest. “They’ll put a bowler in instead of me. Probably Druce. But there’ll be several vacancies. Let’s see. Me. Adams. Ashe. Any more? No, that’s the lot. I should think they’d give you a chance.”

“You needn’t rot,” said Mike uncomfortably. He had his day-dreams, like everybody else, and they always took the form of playing for the first eleven (and, incidentally, making a century in record time). To have to listen while the subject was talked about lightly made him hot and prickly all over.

“I’m not rotting,” said Wyatt seriously, “I’ll suggest it to Burgess to-night.”

“You don’t think there’s any chance of it, really, do you?” said Mike awkwardly.

“I don’t see why not? Buck up in the scratch game this afternoon. Fielding especially. Burgess is simply mad on fielding. I don’t blame him either, especially as he’s a bowler himself. He’d shove a man into the team like a shot, whatever his batting was like, if his fielding was something extra special. So you field like a demon this afternoon, and I’ll carry on the good work in the evening.”

“I say,” said Mike, overcome, “it’s awfully decent of you, Wyatt.”

Billy Burgess, captain of Wrykyn cricket, was a genial giant, who seldom allowed himself to be ruffled. The present was one of the rare occasions on which he permitted himself that luxury. Wyatt found him in his study, shortly before lock-up, full of strange oaths, like the soldier in Shakespeare.

“You rotter! You rotter! You worm!” he observed crisply, as Wyatt appeared.

“Dear old Billy!” said Wyatt. “Come on, give me a kiss, and let’s be friends.”

“You——!”

“William! William!”

“If it wasn’t illegal, I’d like to tie you and Ashe and that blackguard Adams up in a big sack, and drop you into the river. And I’d jump on the sack first. What do you mean by letting the team down like this? I know you were at the bottom of it all.”

He struggled into his shirt—he was changing after a bath—and his face popped wrathfully out at the other end.

“I’m awfully sorry, Bill,” said Wyatt. “The fact is, in the excitement of the moment the M.C.C. match went clean out of my mind.”

“You haven’t got a mind,” grumbled Burgess. “You’ve got a cheap brown paper substitute. That’s your trouble.”

Wyatt turned the conversation tactfully.

“How many wickets did you get to-day?” he asked.

“Eight. For a hundred and three. I was on the spot. Young Jackson caught a hot one off me at third man. That kid’s good.”

“Why don’t you play him against the M.C.C. on Wednesday?” said Wyatt, jumping at his opportunity.

“What? Are you sitting on my left shoe?”

“No. There it is in the corner.”

“Right ho!... What were you saying?”

“Why not play young Jackson for the first?”

“Too small.”