“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.

“Oh, 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.”