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It is unaccountable that I could not now find the seat of Sir George Downing's squire, though I examined particularly every seat on that side of Henry VII's Chapel, where I before found it. I must try again. . . . October 6th. Yesterday was not an eventful day. I took J with me to the city, called on Mr. Sturgis at the Barings' House, and got his checks for a bank post-note.
"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?"
Downing's announcement of Psmith's confession, that Psmith, too, was guiltless, and that the real criminal was Dunster it was this that made him feel that somebody, in the words of an American author, had played a mean trick on him, and substituted for his brain a side-order of cauliflower. Why Dunster, of all people? Dunster, who, he remembered dizzily, had left the school at Christmas.
They walked on toward the houses. "By the way, Adair," said Mike, as the latter started to turn in at Downing's, "I'll write to Strachan tonight about that match." "What's that?" asked Psmith. "Jackson's going to try and get Wrykyn to give us a game," said Adair. "They've got a vacant date. I hope the dickens they'll do it." "Oh, I should think they're certain to," said Mike. "Good night."
Stone and Robinson themselves, that swashbuckling pair, who now treated Mike and Psmith with cold but consistent politeness, were both fair batsmen, and Stone was a good slow bowler. There were other exponents of the game, mostly in Downing's house. Altogether, quite worthy colleagues even for a man who had been a star at Wrykyn. One solitary overture Mike made during that first fortnight.
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 tomorrow?" "Rather," said Mike. "Thanks awfully. Have some tea?" 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.
Twenty-eight off one over, not to mention three wides, would have made Job foam at the mouth. You will probably get sacked. On the other hand, it's worth it. You have lit a candle this day which can never be blown out. You have shown the lads of the village how Comrade Downing's bowling ought to be treated. I don't suppose he'll ever take another wicket." "He doesn't deserve to."
"What on earth's been happening to him?" "Who did it?" Sharpe, the introducer, had no views on the matter. "I found him outside Downing's, with a crowd round him. Everybody seems to have seen him. I wonder who on earth has gone and mucked him up like that!" Mike was the first to show any sympathy for the maltreated animal.
The prevailing taste in country dwellings, before Mr. Downing's time, was defective enough. A large, square, wooden house, painted intensely white, garnished with bright green Venetian blinds standing in a contracted yard inclosed with a red or white wooden fence, was the very beau ideal of a gentleman's country dwelling.
Thence to the Treasury-chamber, and there all the morning to my great grief put to do Sir G. Downing's work of dividing the Customes for this year between the Navy, the Ordnance, and Tangier: but it did so trouble my eyes, that I had rather have given 20l. than have had it to do; but I did thereby oblige Sir Thomas Clifford and Sir J. Duncomb, and so am glad of the opportunity to recommend myself to the former, for the latter I need not, he loving me well already: at it till noon, here being several of my brethren with me, but doing nothing, but I all.
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