“I don’t think so, sir,” answered Jan, blushing furiously.
“But you’ve got your colours, and all the team came last year. It’s the school songs from the choir, and ices and things for all hands, you know.”
“I know, sir.”
“Then why aren’t you coming?”
Jan looked right and left to see that no inquisitive ear was cocked above the collar of contiguous blazer. And then for a second he contemplated the characteristic person of Dudley Relton, as dapper and well-groomed and unlike a pedagogue as Jan knew him to be in grain.
“I haven’t got a dress-suit; that’s why, sir!” he whispered bitterly.
“What infernal luck!” Relton looked as indignant as Jan felt—and then lit up. “I say, though, we’re much the same build, aren’t we? I suppose you wouldn’t let me see if I can fix you up, Jan?”
Had it been possible to strengthen the peculiar bond already existing between man and boy, these words and their successful sequel would have achieved that result. But indeed the last and least of the words counted for more with Jan than anything that came of them. It was the first time that Dudley Relton had called him by his Christian name. True, it was a school tradition that the Eleven went by theirs among their peers. But as yet the Eleven had not treated Jan precisely as one of themselves. He was younger than any of them, and lower in the school than most. In moments of excitement, such as occur in every match, there was still an unfortunate breadth about his vowels; and when he pulled even his Eleven cap tight over his head, making his ears stick out more than ever, and parting his back hair horizontally to the skin, there was sometimes a wink or a grin behind his back, though the little trick was not seldom the prelude to a wicket. It was characteristic, at all events, and as quickly noted by the many on the rugs as by the rest of the side in the field.
“Don’t hustle,” you would hear some fellow say; “the Tiger’s got his cap pulled down, and I want to watch.”
The saying was to acquire almost proverbial value. It proclaimed an omen as sinister in its way as the cloth on Table Mountain, or the sticking out of Bob Heriot’s beard. But Crabtree censured an allusion to it in his cricket scribe’s account of the Old Boys’ Match.