Fathers of Men

by E. W. Hornung

Chips knew nothing until the Sunday, when he said he supposed Jan was coming out after second chapel as usual, and Jan answered very off-hand that he was awfully sorry he was engaged. “One of the Eleven, I suppose?” says Chips, not in the least disposed to grudge him to them. Then Jan told the truth aggressively, and Chips made a tactless comment, whereupon Jan told him he could get somebody else to sit in his study that night. It was the first break in an arrangement which had lasted since their first term. Jan was sorry, and not only because it was so open to misconstruction; he was man enough to go in after all as though nothing had happened. And silly old Chips nearly wept with delight. But nothing was said about the afternoon walk and talk, which Jan had enjoyed more than any since the affair of the haunted house.

It was just as well that Carpenter had been left out of it this time. Two is not only company, but to drag in a third is to invite the critics, and Chips would not have found Evan Devereux improved. Indeed he saw quite enough of Devereux in school to have a strong opinion as to that already; but they never fraternised in the least, and it is in his intimate moments that a boy is at his best or worst.

Evan was at once as intimate with Jan as though they had been at different schools for the last year and here was another reunion of which they must make the most. He took Jan’s arm outside the chapel, and off they went together like old inseparables. Evan seemed a good deal more than a year older; his voice had settled in a fine rich key; his reddish hair was something crisper and perhaps less red. But he was still short for his age, and by way of acquiring the cock-sparrow strut of some short men. His conversation strutted deliciously. It would have made Carpenter roar—afterwards—but grind his teeth at the time. Of course it was cricket conversation, but Evan soon turned it from Jan’s department of the game. Jan followed him in all humility. Evan had been a bit of a batsman all his life. True, in old days the stable lad had usually been able to bowl him out at will, but he had always wished that he could bat as well himself. He said so now, and Evan, who was going to get into the third eleven with luck, was full of sympathy with the best bowler in the school.

“It must be beastly always going in last,” said Evan. “I expect you’re jolly glad when you don’t get a ball. But you don’t have to walk back alone—that’s one thing!”

“I’m always afraid I may have to go in when a few are wanted to win the match, and some good bat well set at the other end. That’s the only thing I should mind,” said Jan.

“You remember the Pinchington ground?” said Evan abruptly, as though he had not been listening.

“I do that!” cried Jan, and Evan looked round at him. As small boys they had played at least one match together on the ground in question; and Jan still wondered what he would not have given to be in flannels then like Master Evan, instead of in his Sunday shirt and trousers; but Evan was thinking that the school bowler had spoken exactly like the stable lad.

“I got up a match there,” he continued, “at the end of last holidays, and I’m going to get up two or three this August. It’s an awful hustle! We play the Pinchington Juniors—awful chaps—but so are some of mine. My best bowler’s learning to drive a hearse. We’ve a new under-gardener who can hit like smoke. I’d have got a lot myself if it had been a decent wicket, but I mean to have one next holiday.”

“Does old Crutchy still bowl?” asked Jan, grinning allusively.

“Rather! Hobbles up to the wicket, clumps down his crutch and slings ’em in like a demon. He would be jam on a decent pitch! I was going to say, I got 48 one day last summer holidays. It wasn’t against the Juniors—it was a boys’ match at Woodyatt Hall—but I did give 'm stick!”