Mike, all unconscious of the stirring proceedings which had been goingon below stairs, was peacefully reading a letter he had received thatmorning from Strachan at Wrykyn, in which the successor to the cricketcaptaincy which should have been Mike's had a good deal to say in alugubrious strain. In Mike's absence things had been going badly withWrykyn. A broken arm, contracted in the course of some rashexperiments with a day-boy's motor-bicycle, had deprived the team ofthe services of Dunstable, the only man who had shown any signs ofbeing able to bowl a side out. Since this calamity, wrote Strachan,everything had gone wrong. The M.C.C., led by Mike's brother Reggie,the least of the three first-class-cricketing Jacksons, had smashedthem by a hundred and fifty runs. Geddington had wiped them off theface of the earth. The Incogs, with a team recruited exclusively fromthe rabbit-hutch--not a well-known man on the side except Stacey,a veteran who had been playing for the club since Fuller Pilch'stime--had got home by two wickets. In fact, it was Strachan's opinionthat the Wrykyn team that summer was about the most hopeless gang ofdead-beats that had ever made an exhibition of itself on the schoolgrounds. The Ripton match, fortunately, was off, owing to an outbreakof mumps at that shrine of learning and athletics--the second outbreakof the malady in two terms. Which, said Strachan, was hard lines onRipton, but a bit of jolly good luck for Wrykyn, as it had saved themfrom what would probably have been a record hammering, Ripton havingeight of their last year's team left, including Dixon, the fastbowler, against whom Mike alone of the Wrykyn team had been able tomake runs in the previous season. Altogether, Wrykyn had struck a badpatch.

　　Mike mourned over his suffering school. If only he could have beenthere to help. It might have made all the difference. In schoolcricket one good batsman, to go in first and knock the bowlers offtheir length, may take a weak team triumphantly through a season. Inschool cricket the importance of a good start for the first wicket isincalculable.

　　As he put Strachan's letter away in his pocket, all his old bitternessagainst Sedleigh, which had been ebbing during the past few days,returned with a rush. He was conscious once more of that feeling ofpersonal injury which had made him hate his new school on the firstday of term.

　　And it was at this point, when his resentment was at its height, thatAdair, the concrete representative of everything Sedleighan, enteredthe room.

　　There are moments in life's placid course when there has got to be thebiggest kind of row. This was one of them.

　　* * * * *Psmith, who was leaning against the mantelpiece, reading the serialstory in a daily paper which he had abstracted from the senior day-room,made the intruder free of the study with a dignified wave of the hand,and went on reading. Mike remained in the deck-chair in which he wassitting, and contented himself with glaring at the newcomer.

　　Psmith was the first to speak.

　　"If you ask my candid opinion," he said, looking up from his paper, "Ishould say that young Lord Antony Trefusis was in the soup already. Iseem to see the _consommé_ splashing about his ankles. He's had anote telling him to be under the oak-tree in the Park at midnight.

　　He's just off there at the end of this instalment. I bet Long Jack,the poacher, is waiting there with a sandbag. Care to see the paper,Comrade Adair? Or don't you take any interest in contemporaryliterature?""Thanks," said Adair. "I just wanted to speak to Jackson for aminute.""Fate," said Psmith, "has led your footsteps to the right place. Thatis Comrade Jackson, the Pride of the School, sitting before you.""What do you want?" said Mike.

　　He suspected that Adair had come to ask him once again to play for theschool. The fact that the M.C.C. match was on the following day madethis a probable solution of the reason for his visit. He could thinkof no other errand that was likely to have set the head of Downing'spaying afternoon calls.

　　"I'll tell you in a minute. It won't take long.""That," said Psmith approvingly, "is right. Speed is the key-note ofthe present age. Promptitude. Despatch. This ............