"Eh! what was it? I didn't see," inquired the master. "They only got one run, I thought?"
"No, but such a ball, three-quarters length, and coming straight for his leg bail. Nothing but that turn of the wrist could have saved him, and he drew it away to leg for a safe one. --Bravo, Johnson!"
"How well they are bowling, though," said Arthur; "they don't mean to be beat, I can see."
"There now," struck in the master; "you see that's just what I have been preaching this half-hour. The delicate play is the true thing. I don't understand cricket, so I don't enjoy those fine draws which you tell me are the best play, though when you or Raggles hit a ball hard away for six I am as delighted as any one. Don't you see the analogy?"
"Yes, sir," answered Tom, looking up roguishly, "I see; only the question remains whether I should have got most good by understanding Greek particles or cricket thoroughly. I'm such a thick, I never should have had time for both."
"I see you are an incorrigible," said the master, with a chuckle; "but I refute you by an example. Arthur there has taken in Greek and cricket too."
"Yes, but no thanks to him; Greek came natural to him. Why, when he first came I remember he used to read Herodotus for pleasure as I did Don Quixote, and couldn't have made a false concord if he'd tried ever so hard; and then I looked after his cricket."
"Out! Bailey has given him out. Do you see, Tom?" cries Arthur. "How foolish of them to run so hard."
"Well, it can't be helped; he has played very well. Whose turn is it to go in?"
"I don't know; they've got your list in the tent."
"Let's go and see," said Tom, rising; but at this moment Jack Raggles and two or three more came running to the island moat.
"O Brown, mayn't I go in next?" shouts the Swiper.
"Whose name is next on the list?" says the captain.
"Winter's, and then Arthur's," answers the boy who carries it;
"but there are only twenty-six runs to get, and no time to lose.
I heard Mr. Aislabie say that the stumps must be drawn at a quarter past eight exactly."
"Oh, do let the Swiper go in," chorus the boys; so Tom yields against his better judgment.
"I dare say now I've lost the match by this nonsense," he says, as he sits down again; "they'll be sure to get Jack's wicket in three or four minutes; however, you'll have the chance, sir, of seeing a hard hit or two," adds he, smiling, and turning to the master.
"Come, none of your irony, Brown," answers the master. "I'm beginning to understand the game scientifically. What a noble game it is, too!"
"Isn't it? But it's more than a game. It's an institution," said Tom.
"Yes," said Arthur--"the birthright of British boys old and young, as habeas corpus and trial by jury are of British men."
"The discipline and reliance on one another which it teaches is so valuable, I think," went on the master, "it ought to be such an unselfish game. It merges the individual in the eleven; he doesn't play that he may win, but that his side may."
"That's very true," said Tom, "and that's why football and cricket, now one comes to think of it, are such much better games than fives or hare-and-hounds, or any others where the object is to come in first or to win for oneself, and not that one's side may win."
"And then the captain of the eleven!" said the master; "what a post is his in our School-world! almost as hard as the Doctor's - requiring skill and gentleness and firmness, and I know not what other rare qualities."
"Which don't he may wish he may get!" said Tom, laughing; "at any rate he hasn't got them yet, or he wouldn't have been such a flat to-night as to let Jack Raggles go in out of his turn."
"Ah, the Doctor never would have done that," said Arthur demurely. "Tom, you've a great deal to learn yet in the art of ruling."
"Well, I wish you'd tell the Doctor so then, and get him to let me stop till I'm twenty. I don't want to leave, I'm sure."
"What a sight it is," broke in the master, "the Doctor as a ruler! Perhaps ours is the only little corner of the British Empire which is thoroughly, wisely, and strongly ruled just now.
I'm more and more thankful every day of my life that I came here to be under him."
"So am I, I'm sure," said Tom, "and more and more sorry that I've got to leave."
"Every place and thing one sees here reminds one of some wise act of his," went on the master. "This island now--you remember the time, Brown, when it was laid out in small gardens, and cultivated by frost-bitten fags in February and March?"
"Of course I do," said Tom; "didn't I hate spending two hours in the afternoon grubbing in the tough dirt with the stump of a fives bat? But turf-cart was good fun enough."
"I dare say it was, but it was always leading to fights with the townspeople; and then the stealing flowers out of all the gardens in Rugby for the Easter show was abominable."
"Well, so it was," said Tom, looking down, "but we fags couldn't help ourselves. But what has that to do with the Doctor's ruling?"
"A great deal, I think," said the master; "what brought island-fagging to an end?"
"Why, the Easter speeches were put off till midsummer," said Tom, "and the sixth had the gymnastic poles put up here."
"Well, and who changed the time of the speeches, and put the idea of gymnastic poles into the heads of their worships the sixth form?" said the master.
"The Doctor, I suppose," said Tom. "I never thought of that."
"Of course you didn't," said the master, "or else, fag as you were, you would have shouted with the whole school against putting down old customs. And that's the way that all the Doctor's reforms have been carried out when he has been left to himself--quietly and naturally, putting a good thing in the place of a bad, and letting the bad die out; no wavering, and no hurry--the best thing that could be done for the time being, and patience for the rest."
"Just Tom's own way," chimed in Arthur, nudging Tom with his elbow--"driving a nail where it will go;" to which allusion Tom answered by a sly kick.
"Exactly so," said the master, innocent of the allusion and by-play.
