Mike, P. G. Wodehouse [best books to read for teens .TXT] 📗

meeting dispersed.

“Jackson and Wilson, come here.  What’s the meaning of this disgraceful conduct?  Put that dog out of the room, Jackson.”

Mike removed the yelling Sammy and shut the door on him.

“Well, Wilson?”

“Please, sir, I was playing with a clock-work rat——­”

“What business have you to be playing with clock-work rats?”

“Then I remembered,” said Mike, “that I had left my Horace in my desk, so I came in——­”

“And by a fluke, sir,” said Wilson, as one who tells of strange things, “the rat happened to be pointing in the same direction, so he came in, too.”

“I met Sammy on the gravel outside and he followed me.”

“I tried to collar him, but when you told me to come in, sir, I had to let him go, and he came in after the rat.”

It was plain to Mr. Downing that the burden of sin was shared equally by both culprits.  Wilson had supplied the rat, Mike the dog; but Mr. Downing liked Wilson and disliked Mike.  Wilson was in the Fire Brigade, frivolous at times, it was true, but nevertheless a member.  Also he kept wicket for the school.  Mike was a member of the Archaeological Society, and had refused to play cricket.

Mr. Downing allowed these facts to influence him in passing sentence.

“One hundred lines, Wilson,” he said.  “You may go.”

Wilson departed with the air of a man who has had a great deal of fun, and paid very little for it.

Mr. Downing turned to Mike.  “You will stay in on Saturday afternoon, Jackson; it will interfere with your Archaeological studies, I fear, but it may teach you that we have no room at Sedleigh for boys who spend their time loafing about and making themselves a nuisance.  We are a keen school; this is no place for boys who do nothing but waste their time.  That will do, Jackson.”

And Mr. Downing walked out of the room.  In affairs of this kind a master has a habit of getting the last word.

CHAPTER XXXIX

ACHILLES LEAVES HIS TENT

They say misfortunes never come singly.  As Mike sat brooding over his wrongs in his study, after the Sammy incident, Jellicoe came into the room, and, without preamble, asked for the loan of a sovereign.

When one has been in the habit of confining one’s lendings and borrowings to sixpences and shillings, a request for a sovereign comes as something of a blow.

“What on earth for?” asked Mike.

“I say, do you mind if I don’t tell you?  I don’t want to tell anybody.  The fact is, I’m in a beastly hole.”

“Oh, sorry,” said Mike.  “As a matter of fact, I do happen to have a quid.  You can freeze on to it, if you like.  But it’s about all I have got, so don’t be shy about paying it back.”

Jellicoe was profuse in his thanks, and disappeared in a cloud of gratitude.

Mike felt that Fate was treating him badly.  Being kept in on Saturday meant that he would be unable to turn out for Little Borlock against Claythorpe, the return match.  In the previous game he had scored ninety-eight, and there was a lob bowler in the Claythorpe ranks whom he was particularly anxious to meet again.  Having to yield a sovereign to Jellicoe—­why on earth did the man want all that?—­meant that, unless a carefully worded letter to his brother Bob at Oxford had the desired effect, he would be practically penniless for weeks.

In a gloomy frame of mind he sat down to write to Bob, who was playing regularly for the ’Varsity this season, and only the previous week had made a century against Sussex, so might be expected to be in a sufficiently softened mood to advance the needful. (Which, it may be stated at once, he did, by return of post.)

Mike was struggling with the opening sentences of this letter—­he was never a very ready writer—­when Stone and Robinson burst into the room.

Mike put down his pen, and got up.  He was in warlike mood, and welcomed the intrusion.  If Stone and Robinson wanted battle, they should have it.

But the motives of the expedition were obviously friendly.  Stone beamed.  Robinson was laughing.

“You’re a sportsman,” said Robinson.

“What did he give you?” asked Stone.

They sat down, Robinson on the table, Stone in Psmith’s deck-chair.  Mike’s heart warmed to them.  The little disturbance in the dormitory was a thing of the past, done with, forgotten, contemporary with Julius Caesar.  He felt that he, Stone and Robinson must learn to know and appreciate one another.

There was, as a matter of fact, nothing much wrong with Stone and Robinson.  They were just ordinary raggers of the type found at every public school, small and large.  They were absolutely free from brain.  They had a certain amount of muscle, and a vast store of animal spirits.  They looked on school life purely as a vehicle for ragging.  The Stones and Robinsons are the swashbucklers of the school world.  They go about, loud and boisterous, with a whole-hearted and cheerful indifference to other people’s feelings, treading on the toes of their neighbour and shoving him off the pavement, and always with an eye wide open for any adventure.  As to the kind of adventure, they are not particular so long as it promises excitement.  Sometimes they go through their whole school career without accident.  More often they run up against a snag in the shape of some serious-minded and muscular person who objects to having his toes trodden on and being shoved off the pavement, and then they usually sober down, to the mutual advantage of themselves and the rest of the community.

One’s opinion of this type of youth varies according to one’s point of view.  Small boys whom they had occasion to kick, either from pure high spirits or as a punishment for some slip from the narrow path which the ideal small boy should tread, regarded Stone and Robinson as bullies of the genuine “Eric” and “St. Winifred’s” brand.  Masters were rather afraid of them.  Adair had a smouldering dislike for them.  They were useful at cricket, but apt not to take Sedleigh as seriously as he could have wished.

As for Mike, he now found them pleasant company, and began to get out the tea-things.

“Those Fire Brigade meetings,” said Stone, “are a rag.  You can do what you like, and you never get more than a hundred lines.”

“Don’t you!” said Mike.  “I got Saturday afternoon.”

“What!”

“Is Wilson in too?”

“No.  He got a hundred lines.”

Stone and Robinson were quite concerned.

“What a beastly swindle!”

“That’s because you don’t play cricket.  Old Downing lets you do what you like if you join the Fire Brigade and play cricket.”

“‘We are, above all, a keen school,’” quoted Stone.  “Don’t you ever play?”

“I have played a bit,” said Mike.

“Well, why don’t you have a shot?  We aren’t such flyers here.  If you know one end of a bat from the other, you could get into some sort of a team.  Were you at school anywhere before you came here?”

“I was at Wrykyn.”

“Why on earth did you leave?” asked Stone.  “Were you sacked?”

“No.  My pater took me away.”

“Wrykyn?” said Robinson.  “Are you any relation of the Jacksons there—­J.  W. and the others?”

“Brother.”

“What!”

“Well, didn’t you play at all there?”

“Yes,” said Mike, “I did.  I was in the team three years, and I should have been captain this year, if I’d stopped on.”

There was a profound and gratifying sensation.  Stone gaped, and Robinson nearly dropped his tea-cup.

Stone broke the silence.

“But I mean to say—­look here!  What I mean is, why aren’t you playing?  Why don’t you play now?”

“I do.  I play for a village near here.  Place called Little Borlock.  A man who played against Wrykyn for the Free Foresters captains them.  He asked me if I’d like some games for them.”

“But why not for the school?”

“Why should I?  It’s much better fun for the village.  You don’t get ordered about by Adair, for a start.”

“Adair sticks on side,” said Stone.

“Enough for six,” agreed Robinson.

“By Jove,” said Stone, “I’ve got an idea.  My word, what a rag!”

“What’s wrong now?” inquired Mike politely.

“Why, look here.  To-morrow’s Mid-term Service day.  It’s nowhere near the middle of the term, but they always have it in the fourth week.  There’s chapel at half-past nine till half-past ten.  Then the rest of the day’s a whole holiday.  There are always house matches.  We’re playing Downing’s.  Why don’t you play and let’s smash them?”

“By Jove, yes,” said Robinson.  “Why don’t you?  They’re always sticking on side because they’ve won the house cup three years running.  I say, do you bat or bowl?”

“Bat.  Why?”

Robinson rocked on the table.

“Why, old Downing fancies himself as a bowler.  You must play, and knock the cover off him.”

“Masters don’t play in house matches, surely?”

“This isn’t a real house match.  Only a friendly.  Downing always turns out on Mid-term Service day.  I say, do play.”

“Think of the rag.”

“But the team’s full,” said Mike.

“The list isn’t up yet.  We’ll nip across to Barnes’ study, and make him alter it.”

They dashed out of the room.  From down the passage Mike heard yells of “Barnes!” the closing of a door, and a murmur of excited conversation.  Then footsteps returning down the passage.

Barnes appeared, on his face the look of one who has seen visions.

“I say,” he said, “is it true?  Or is Stone rotting?  About Wrykyn, I mean.”

“Yes, I was in the team.”

Barnes was an enthusiastic cricketer.  He studied his Wisden, and he had an immense respect for Wrykyn cricket.

“Are you the M. Jackson, then, who had an average of fifty-one point nought three last year?”

“Yes.”

Barnes’s manner became like that of a curate talking to a bishop.

“I say,” he said, “then—­er—­will you play against Downing’s to-morrow?”

“Rather,” said Mike.  “Thanks awfully.  Have some tea?”

CHAPTER XL

THE MATCH WITH DOWNING’S

It is the curious instinct which prompts most people to rub a thing in that makes the lot of the average convert an unhappy one.  Only the very self-controlled can refrain from improving the occasion and scoring off the convert.  Most leap at the opportunity.

It was so in Mike’s case.  Mike was not a genuine convert, but to Mr. Downing he had the outward aspect of one.  When you have been impressing upon a non-cricketing boy for nearly a month that (a) the school is above all a keen school, (b) that all members of it should play cricket, and (c) that by not playing cricket he is ruining his chances in this world and imperilling them in the next; and when, quite unexpectedly, you come upon this boy dressed in cricket flannels, wearing cricket boots and carrying a cricket bag, it seems only natural to assume that you have converted him, that the seeds of your eloquence have fallen on fruitful soil and sprouted.

Mr. Downing assumed it.

He was walking to the field with Adair and another member of his team when he came upon Mike.

“What!” he cried.  “Our Jackson clad in suit of mail and armed for the fray!”

This was Mr. Downing’s No. 2 manner—­the playful.

“This is indeed Saul among the prophets.  Why this sudden enthusiasm for a game which I understood that you despised?  Are our opponents so reduced?”

Psmith, who was with Mike, took charge of the affair with a languid grace which had maddened hundreds in its time, and which never failed to ruffle Mr. Downing.

“We are, above all, sir,” he said, “a keen house.  Drones are not welcomed by us.  We are essentially versatile.  Jackson, the archaeologist of yesterday, becomes the cricketer of to-day.  It is the right spirit, sir,” said Psmith earnestly.  “I like to see it.”

“Indeed, Smith?  You are not playing yourself, I notice.  Your enthusiasm has bounds.”

“In our house, sir, competition is fierce, and the Selection Committee unfortunately passed me over.”

There were a number of pitches dotted about over the field, for there was always a touch of the London Park about it on Mid-term Service day.  Adair, as captain of cricket, had naturally selected the best for his own match.  It was a good wicket, Mike saw.  As a matter of fact the wickets at Sedleigh were nearly always good.  Adair had infected the ground-man with some of his own keenness, with the result that that once-leisurely official now found himself sometimes, with a kind of mild surprise, working really hard.  At the beginning of the previous season Sedleigh had played a scratch team from a neighbouring town on a wicket which, except for the creases, was absolutely undistinguishable from the surrounding turf, and behind the pavilion after the match Adair had spoken certain home truths to the ground-man.  The latter’s reformation had dated from that moment.

Barnes, timidly jubilant, came up to Mike with the news that he had won the toss, and the request that Mike would go in first with him.

In stories of the “Not Really a Duffer” type, where the nervous new boy, who has been found crying in the boot-room over the photograph of his sister, contrives to get an innings in a game, nobody suspects that he is really a prodigy till he hits the Bully’s first ball out of the ground for six.

With Mike it was different.  There was no pitying smile on Adair’s face as he started his run preparatory to sending down the first ball.  Mike, on the cricket field, could