The Gold Bat Part 7

"There isn't any." This in a tone not untinged with triumph, as if the speaker realised that here was a distinct score to him.

"No milk?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"You never had any."

"Well, just cut across--no, half a second. What are you doing downstairs?"

"Having tea."

"Then you've got milk."

"Only a little." This apprehensively.

"Bring it up. You can have what we leave."

Disgusted retirement of Master Renford.

"What I really came about," said Trevor again, "was business."

"Colours?" inquired Milton, rummaging in the tin for biscuits with sugar on them. "Good brand of biscuit you keep, Trevor."

"Yes. I think we might give Alexander and Parker their third."

"All right. Any others?"

"Barry his second, do you think?"

"Rather. He played a good game today. He's an improvement on Rand-Brown."

"Glad you think so. I was wondering whether it was the right thing to do, chucking Rand-Brown out after one trial like that. But still, if you think Barry's better--"

"Streets better. I've had heaps of chances of watching them and comparing them, when they've been playing for the house. It isn't only that Rand-Brown can't tackle, and Barry can. Barry takes his pa.s.ses much better, and doesn't lose his head when he's pressed."

"Just what I thought," said Trevor. "Then you'd go on playing him for the first?"

"Rather. He'll get better every game, you'll see, as he gets more used to playing in the first three-quarter line. And he's as keen as anything on getting into the team. Practises taking pa.s.ses and that sort of thing every day."

"Well, he'll get his colours if we lick Ripton."

"We ought to lick them. They've lost one of their forwards, Clifford, a red-haired chap, who was good out of touch. I don't know if you remember him."

"I suppose I ought to go and see Allardyce about these colours, now.

Good-bye."

There was running and pa.s.sing on the Monday for every one in the three teams. Trevor and Clowes met Mr Seymour as they were returning. Mr Seymour was the football master at Wrykyn.

"I see you've given Barry his second, Trevor."

"Yes, sir."

"I think you're wise to play him for the first. He knows the game, which is the great thing, and he will improve with practice," said Mr Seymour, thus corroborating Milton's words of the previous Sat.u.r.day.

"I'm glad Seymour thinks Barry good," said Trevor, as they walked on.

"I shall go on playing him now."

"Found out who wrote that letter yet?"

Trevor laughed.

"Not yet," he said.

"Probably Rand-Brown," suggested Clowes. "He's the man who would gain most by Barry's not playing. I hear he had a row with Mill just before his study was ragged."

"Everybody in Seymour's has had rows with Mill some time or other,"

said Trevor.

Clowes stopped at the door of the junior day-room to find his f.a.g.

Trevor went on upstairs. In the pa.s.sage he met Ruthven.

Ruthven seemed excited.

"I say. Trevor," he exclaimed, "have you seen your study?"

"Why, what's the matter with it?"

"You'd better go and look."

VII

"WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF THE LEAGUE"

Trevor went and looked.

It was rather an interesting sight. An earthquake or a cyclone might have made it a little more picturesque, but not much more. The general effect was not unlike that of an American saloon, after a visit from Mrs Carrie Nation (with hatchet). As in the case of Mill's study, the only thing that did not seem to have suffered any great damage was the table. Everything else looked rather off colour. The mantelpiece had been swept as bare as a bone, and its contents littered the floor.

Trevor dived among the debris and retrieved the latest addition to his art gallery, the photograph of this year's first fifteen. It was a wreck. The gla.s.s was broken and the photograph itself slashed with a knife till most of the faces were unrecognisable. He picked up another treasure, last year's first eleven. Smashed gla.s.s again. Faces cut about with knife as before. His collection of snapshots was torn into a thousand fragments, though, as Mr Jerome said of the papier-mache trout, there may only have been nine hundred. He did not count them. His bookshelf was empty. The books had gone to swell the contents of the floor. There was a Shakespeare with its cover off.

Pages twenty-two to thirty-one of _Vice Versa_ had parted from the parent establishment, and were lying by themselves near the door. _The Rogues' March_ lay just beyond them, and the look of the cover suggested that somebody had either been biting it or jumping on it with heavy boots.

There was other damage. Over the mantelpiece in happier days had hung a dozen sea gulls' eggs, threaded on a string. The string was still there, as good as new, but of the eggs nothing was to be seen, save a fine parti-coloured powder--on the floor, like everything else in the study. And a good deal of ink had been upset in one place and another.

Trevor had been staring at the ruins for some time, when he looked up to see Clowes standing in the doorway.