Thereafter came a flood of jolly things to swim in. After the new arrangement in Remove A, consequent on that monumental cribbing-row, he had got into the lower fifth at Easter, and would, when he went back at Michaelmas, find himself in the middle fifth. Frank had made him work with intelligence and industry as well, though the distractions of the summer-half had been frightfully alluring. For David was really coming on as a wily left-hand bowler, and it had been extremely difficult to give more than casual attention to the “Commentaries” of Julius Cæsar, when his inmost mind was wrapped up in cricket. It was not hundreds of overs, but thousands of them that David delivered in imagination when he ought to have been crossing the Alps with Hannibal, or challenging Medea’s strange use of the pluperfect when that infuriated lady was in the act of stabbing her children. But he had got his remove, and a satisfactory report of his work, so that there was peace and joy at Baxminster, and his father sanguinely prophesied that he would go up into a fresh form every term, as he himself had done.
Half-way through the summer-half had come the most intoxicating possibility, namely, that he had a chance of getting his house-colours for cricket, his very first year at school. This was a thing nearly unheard of (though, of course, Maddox had done it), but he had been tried in house-matches, and had done rather well. Then that hope had gone to the grave, for when Maddox put up the list of the completed house-eleven his name did not appear. But he had known that it was not going to do so already, and the manner of its exclusion was, secretly to him, almost a greater gratification than its appearance would have been. That, too, lying on the hot sand, he turned greedily over in his mind, licking the chops of memory.
It had happened thus. He had come one afternoon into Maddox’s study, just before the final promotions were made, and Maddox opened the subject.
“David, would you be fearfully sick if I didn’t give you your house-colours?” he asked abruptly.
David had already allowed himself to hope for, even to expect them, and the sunshine went out of life.
“I think I should,” he said. “Not that it matters a hang. . . . I say, I’m going up town. Do you want anything?”
“No, thanks. But just wait a minute. Oh, don’t look like that!”
David’s face had taken an expression of the most Stygian gloom.
“Sorry,” he said. “Of course I was an ass to hope it.”
“No, you weren’t,” said Maddox. “But I’ve been bothering about it, and I thought I’d talk to you. It’s like this: you and Ozzy have about equal claim, and, if we weren’t such pals, I think I should toss up which of you I gave colours to. But the house would think I was favouring you if I put you in. There’s another thing, too; it’s Ozzy’s last year, and your first. I don’t know that that matters so much; so, if you find yourself left out, it’ll be because we’re pals. See?”