Ainger replied by giving him a thrashing there and then, despite his howls and protests that he had just been going, and would never do it again. The captain replied that he didn't fancy he _would_ do it again in a hurry; and as the remainder of the company expressed positive impatience to go to the cricket-field, he let them of! with a caution, and, after seeing them started, walked moodily up to Felgate's study.

Felgate was comfortably stretched on two chairs, reading a novel. But as he held the book upside down, Ainger concluded that he could not be very deeply engrossed in its contents.

"You're working, I hear?" said the captain.

"Is that all you've come to tell me?" replied Felgate.

"No, only most fellows when they're reading--even if it's novels, read the right way up. It's bad for the eyes to do it upside down."

Felgate looked a little disconcerted and shut up his book.

"You've missed the last two weeks at cricket," said the captain. "We have managed to get on without you, though, and one of the things I looked in to say now was that if you choose to stay away always you are welcome. Don't think it will put us out."

This was unexpected. Felgate was prepared to hear a peremptory order to go to the field, and had laid his plans for resisting it.

"I've just been seeing one or two other louts down below who hadn't turned up. I'm glad to hear you advised them to go when I sent Wake to fetch them. It's a pity they didn't take your advice, for I've had to thrash Munger. And if you happen to know where I can find the coward who put him and the rest up to breaking the rule, and didn't dare to show face himself, I'll thrash him too."

Felgate was completely disconcerted by this speech, and gnashed his teeth to find himself made a fool of after all.

"Why on earth can't you get out of my study and go down to your cricket?

I don't want you here," he snarled.

"I dare say not. But I thought you ought to know what I have been doing to enforce the rule, and what I mean to do. I hope you will tell that coward I spoke of what he may expect."

"Look here," said Felgate, firing up--for a baulked bully rarely talks in a whisper--"you may think yourself a very important person, but I don't." (This was the speech Felgate had prepared in case he had been ordered down to cricket.) "I consider the cricket rule is a bad one, and I'm not surprised if fellows kick against it. I've something better to do than to go down to the field three times a week; and I shall certainly sympathise with any fellows who complain of it and try to get it abolished, and I've told them so. You can do what you like with me.

I've told you what I shall do."

"And I," said the captain, whose temper was extinguished, "have told you what I shall do. Is this room large enough, or shall we come outside?"

Felgate stared at him in consternation.

"Whatever do you mean?"

"To fight."

"Rot! I'm not going to fight."

"Very well. Then I give you your choice--a thrashing like that I gave Munger just now; or you can go and put on your flannels and come down to the field."

Felgate hesitated. He had rarely been in such an awkward fix. He knew that a thrashing from the captain, besides being painful, would mean the extinction of any influence he ever had at Grandcourt. On the other hand--

But he had not time to argue it out. Ainger had already laid down his bat.

"You shall have it your _own_ way," snarled he; "I'll come to the field."

CHAPTER TWENTY.

THE LITTLE SWEEP.

Ainger's victory over the rebels had a great moral effect on the house.

There was no further question as to the hardship of compulsory cricket; indeed, everyone became so keen on the prospect of turning out a "crack"

eleven, that if the rule had required the attendance of every boy daily instead of thrice a week the fellows would have turned up.

The prospects brightened rapidly after a week or two's practice.

Railsford put his shoulder to the wheel with his usual energy. He would bowl or bat or field with equal cheerfulness, if thereby he might smarten up the form of any player, however indifferent, who really wanted to improve. He specially devoted himself to the candidates for a place in the second eleven; and it presently began to be rumoured that Railsford's would be able to put two elevens in the field, able to hold their own against any other two in Grandcourt. It was rather a big boast, but after the exploits of the house at the sports n.o.body could afford to make too little of its ambitious projects.

Arthur, Dig, and their _coterie_--most of them safely housed already in the second eleven--caught a regular cricket fever. They lived in an atmosphere of cricket. They thought in cricket, and dreamed of nothing else. Any question which arose resolved itself into a cricket match in their minds, and was mentally played out to bring it to a decision.

Their ordinary talk betrayed their mania, and even their work was solaced by the importation of cricket into its deepest problems.

Here, for instance, is an ill.u.s.tration of the kind of talk which might been have overheard one evening during the first part of the term in the study over Railsford's head.

Arthur was groaning over his Euclid.

"I'm clean bowled by this blessed proposition," said he. "Here have I been slogging away at it all the evening and never got my bat properly under it yet. You might give us a leg-up, Dig."

"Bless you," said Dig, "I'm no good at that sort of yorker. I'm bad enough stumped as it is by this Horace. He gets an awful screw on now and then, and just when you think you've scored off him, there you are in among the slips, caught out low down. I vote we go and ask Marky."

"Don't like it," said Arthur. "Marky served us scurvily over poor old Smiley, and I don't mean to go over his popping-crease, if I can help it, any more."

"That was an underhand twist altogether," said Dig. "Bad enough for Ainger to bowl us out, without him giving it out, too, the way he did.

You know, I really think we ought to tell him what a nice way we can stump him out if we like. He just thinks we've caved in and put off our pads."

"I don't like it, Dig. It would be an awfully bad swipe, and Daisy would be knocked over as much as he would. We're not forced to play up to him any more; but I don't like running him out."

"You're a jolly decent brother-in-law, you are," said Dig admiringly, "and it's a pity Marky don't know what he owes you."

At this point Tilbury burst into the room. If Dig and Arthur were a little crazed about cricket, Tilbury was positively off his head.

"How's that, umpires?" cried he, as he entered. "Did you see me playing this afternoon? Went in second man, with Wake and Sherriff bowling, my boys. I knocked up thirty-two off my own bat, and would have been not out, only Mills saw where I placed my smacks in between the two legs, and slipped up and got hold of me low down with his left."

"All right," said Arthur. "Why don't you put on side? I was watching you, and saw you give three awfully bad chances in your first over.

Never mind, stick to it, and we'll make a tidy player of you some day.

I hear they're going to get up a third eleven. I dare say Ainger will stick you in it if we ask him."

Tilbury laughed good-humouredly; for it was all on the cards that he might get a place in the first eleven before very long.

"I fancied Ainger had knocked you two over the boundary a little while ago. I heard someone say, by the way, if you two could be thrown into one, and taught to hold your bat straight and not hit everything across the wicket, you could be spared to play subst.i.tute in Wickford Infant School eleven at their next treat. I said I fancied not, but they're going to try you, for the sake of getting rid of you for half a day."

"Get along. You needn't bowl any of your mild lobs down to us. By the way, is it true you've been stuck in the choir?"

"Yes; awful sell. I tried to scratch, but Parks said they were hard up for a good contralto; so I had to go in the team. I'm to be third man up in the anthem to-morrow--got half a line of solo."

"All serene," said Arthur, "we'll look out for squalls. Tip us one of your low A's, and we'll sky it from our pew. Who's there?"

It was Simson, also infected with the fever, although with him, being of the weak-minded order, it took the form of a craze for "sport"

generally. For Simson, as we have mentioned, once tipped a ball to leg for two, and consequently was ent.i.tled to be regarded as an authority on every subject pertaining to the turf generally.