The Willoughby Captains - Reed Talbot Baines - Страница 89

The match is nearly over, and it looks as if Wyndham will be able to see the end of it. Nine wickets are down for forty-nine, and five runs must yet be scored to save Templeton from a single-innings defeat.

The last man begins ominously, for he makes two off his first ball. Willoughby presses round, breathless, to watch the next. It whizzes over the wicket, but does no harm. The next ball — one of Forbes’s shooters — strikes on the batsman’s pad.

“How’s that, umpire?” yells every one.

“Not out!” says old Wyndham.

The next ball comes — but before it has left the bowler’s hand young Wyndham has begun to run. Loud shouts and laughter follow his headlong progress.

“Well run, sir; put it on!” scream Parson and Telson.

“Stop thief!” howl Bosher and his friends.

“He’s gaining, there! Pull yourself together!” cry Cusack and Pilbury.

Heedless of these familiar cheers — for lately this has been a daily performance — Wyndham saves his honour at two seconds to six, the identical moment when Forbes’s last ball sends the Templeton bails flying high over long-stop’s head, and Willoughby is proclaimed winner of the match by one innings and three runs.

A jovial party assembles an hour later for “high tea” in the captain’s study.

Fairbairn, Coates, Porter, and Crossfield are there, and Bloomfield and Riddell, and the two Wyndhams, and assuredly a cheerier party never sat down in Willoughby.

“I never expected to find you a Welcher,” says old Wyndham to the captain.

“No? A fellow’s sure to find his level, you see, some day,” replied Riddell, laughing.

“Yes, but the thing is, Welch’s is coming up to his level,” says Bloomfield, “instead of his going down to Welch’s.”

“I should say,” says young Wyndham, blushing a little to hear his own voice before this imposing assembly, “all Willoughby’s coming up to his level!”

“The young ’un’s right, though he is a Limpet,” says Crossfield. “I had my doubts of old Riddell once, but I’ve more doubts about myself than him now.”

“You know, Wynd.,” says Porter, “we’re such a happy family, I shouldn’t wonder if I forget before long what house I belong to.”

“I’ll see you’re reminded of that, my boy, before the house football matches next term,” says Fairbairn, laughing.

“Yes,” says the old captain, “you’ll be a poor show if you don’t stick up for your own house.”

“Well, I don’t know,” says Porter, “we’ve had such a lot of sticking up for our own houses this term, that I’m rather sick of it.”

“Sticking up for ourselves, you mean,” says Bloomfield, “that’s where one or two I could name went wrong.”

“It seems to me,” says Coates, “that sticking up for your house, and sticking up for your school, and sticking up for yourself, are none of them bad things.”

“But,” says old Wyndham, “unless you put them in the right order they may do more harm than good.”

“And what do you say the right order is?” asks Crossfield.

“Why, of course, Willoughby first, your house next, and yourself last.”

“In other words,” says the captain, “if you stick up for Willoughby you can save yourself any trouble about the other two, for they are both included in the good of the old school. At least, that’s my notion!”

And with what better notion could we say good-bye to the Willoughby Captains?