“Beggars can’t be choosers,” said Jan with apparent deliberation, but in reality on as sudden an impulse as ever dictated spoken words. “You see, you don’t know what it is to be a beggar, Cave!”
“I don’t, I’m glad to say.”
“Well, I do, and it’s rather awkward when you’re captain of the Eleven.”
“It must be.”
“It is, Cave, and if you could lend me a fiver I’d promise to pay you back before the end of the term.”
The calm speech was so extraordinarily calm, the tone so matter-of-fact and every-day, that after a second’s amazement the Old Boy could only assume that Jan’s splitting head had already affected the mind within. That charitable construction did not prevent Charles Cave from refusing the monstrous request with equal coolness and promptitude; and an utterly unabashed reception of the rebuff only confirmed his conclusion.
“After all, why should you?” asked Jan, with a strange chuckle. “But I shall have to raise it somewhere, and I daresay you won’t tell anybody that I tried you first.”
And before there could be any answer to that, Jan had turned without ceremony into Heath’s, the saddler’s shop, where the boys bespoke flies to take them to their trains at the end of the term. As a rule these orders were booked weeks beforehand, but the fly that Jan now ordered was to be outside Mr. Heriot’s quad at 2.45 that afternoon.
“Is it to go to Molton, sir?”
“That’s it.”