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Updated: June 3, 2025
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.
As he put Strachan's letter away in his pocket, all his old bitterness against Sedleigh, which had been ebbing during the past few days, returned with a rush. He was conscious once more of that feeling of personal injury which had made him hate his new school on the first day of term.
He was feeling better disposed towards Adair and Sedleigh than he had felt, but he was not sure that he was quite prepared to go as far as a complete climb-down. "It wouldn't be a bad idea," continued Psmith. "There's nothing like giving a man a bit in every now and then. It broadens the soul and improves the action of the skin.
"Will you play for us against the Old Sedleighans to-morrow?" he said at length. Mike tossed his pads into his bag and got up. "No, thanks." There was a silence. "Above it, I suppose?" "Not a bit. Not up to it. I shall want a lot of coaching at that end net of yours before I'm fit to play for Sedleigh." There was another pause. "Then you won't play?" asked Adair.
There had appeared to him something rather fine in his policy of refusing to identify himself in any way with Sedleigh, a touch of the stone-walls-do-not-a-prison-make sort of thing. He now saw that his attitude was to be summed up in the words, "Sha'n't play." It came upon Mike with painful clearness that he had been making an ass of himself.
One of the most acute of these crises, and the most important, in that it was the direct cause of Mike's appearance in Sedleigh cricket, had to do with the third weekly meeting of the School Fire Brigade. It may be remembered that this well-supported institution was under Mr. Downing's special care. It was, indeed, his pet hobby and the apple of his eye.
Wrykyn had then gone in, lost Strachan for twenty before lunch, and finally completed their innings at a quarter to four for a hundred and thirty-one. This was better than Sedleigh had expected. At least eight of the team had looked forward dismally to an afternoon's leather-hunting.
"It is not a large school," he said, "and I don't suppose it could play Wrykyn at cricket, but it has one merit boys work there. Young Barlitt won a Balliol scholarship from Sedleigh last year." Barlitt was the vicar's son, a silent, spectacled youth who did not enter very largely into Mike's world. They had met occasionally at tennis-parties, but not much conversation had ensued.
Wrykyn had then gone in, lost Strachan for twenty before lunch, and finally completed their innings at a quarter to four for a hundred and thirty-one. This was better than Sedleigh had expected. At least eight of the team had looked forward dismally to an afternoon's leather hunting.
What made it worse was that he saw, after watching behind the nets once or twice, that Sedleigh cricket was not the childish burlesque of the game which he had been rash enough to assume that it must be. Numbers do not make good cricket. They only make the presence of good cricketers more likely, by the law of averages. Mike soon saw that cricket was by no means an unknown art at Sedleigh.
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